Volunteering in South Africa - Cheetah Experience

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My final destination on my big adventure was South Africa, where I had arranged to volunteer at a big cat sanctuary called Cheetah Experience 😞http://www.cheetahexperience.com/) in Bloemfontein for 3 weeks. I have to admit it was quite a culture shock going from living the aussie life down under to living in Africa, more so than I could have ever imagined. After a few days though I settled in and within no time at all Bloem became my home and the other volunteers were my family. Each country I visited over the 3 months was so insanely different, it was a struggle to adapt sometimes, but it made life a lot more interesting!

So, we were living in a volunteer house just down the road from the sanctuary, and wow it was such luxury after backpacking for so long I couldnt believe it! There was a massive kitchen, stocked full to the brim with food (possibly explains the weight gain to an extent ha), and everything we could possibly need. I was staying in a 4 bed room with Jay, Stacey and Sam to begin with, until Sam left and Ellen arrived. Firstly, can I just say, we had drawers and wardrobes and mirrors and everything! Very very exciting when you've been living out of a rucksack that lives under your bed for the past few months. I could actually unpack and feel like I lived there. That was a very strange factor to Africa actually, not having to move hostels or towns every few days to make sure you saw and did everything, because its all on your doorstep practicly.

Anyway, so the volunteer home was just lovely, we had bbqs outside in the evenings, plenty of space for us all, a tv room, and a massive kitchen in the middle of it all which predictably became where we all seemed to congregate. The evenings were pretty eventful actually, but we will get to that after Ive explained what we did at Cheetah Experience - the reason we were there!

The idea behind Cheetah Experience is to promote and fund the conservation of the Cheetah and other endangered species through captive breeding, behavioural research and public awareness. It's a big cat sanctuary that was founded in 2006 with the long term goal of breeding with cheetahs. Our intention is to release them back into a 'protected wild' where they will be interfered with as little as possible by humans, yet will still be monitored closely by vets and researchers in order for us to gain better insight into the lives of these magnificent creatures.

Each morning at half 8 we would have a meeting with the permanent staff members and organise who was doing which jobs for the day, and then it would be straight off to work until lunch, then back to work until half 4 ish. Jobs would include preparing the animals food (yep I had to work with raw meet everyday! that smell will be with me forever now, pretty horrific to say the least), feeding animals, cleaning, grooming and taking care of the animals, fence patrol, maintenance, tours, curio shop duty, bar/lapa duty...etc. After refusing to cook the meat at all in Australia, having to suddenly handle skinned chickens and other dead animals including warthog..cows...ducks etc on a daily basis was not my idea of fun, but the cats needed feeding so it had to be done. The meat room had quite a smell to it, and the worst day was when we had bins full of chicken and we had to decide if it was off or not before seperating up all of the different body parts, mainly through seeing how green it was, and by sniffing it! yes putting your face right up close and giving it a good smell. Safe to say I didnt last very long in the meat room that day. And I havent cooked with meat since....

All of the other jobs were fantastic though. We would spend so much time with all of the animals whether we were feeding them or cleaning out their enclosures, or even just babysitting them like we had to with the youngest lion cubs 'Alex' and 'Adamou' and the little black leopard 'Panthera'. It was just incredible to have the opportunity like this to help hand raise these beautiful animals. Whenever there was a chance I would just go into one of the enclosures and sit with the animals and play with them and just watch them. The wolves were a particular favourite, they are such shy animals, but once they gain your trust they can be so affectionate and loving just like a domestic dog. It was so heartbreaking saying goodbye to all of them when I was leaving. Seeing how much all of the other volunteers and staff cared for the animals, I realise theres so many people out there just like me and it was wonderful to be a part of that. We were all very like minded, which is one of the great thing about travelling like this, you meet so many people with similar interests and who want to get the same things out of life.

When our designated jobs were done, there was always plenty of other things that needed doing. Marnus and Erin helped organise little projects around the place for us to work at. We built a new storage shelter, cleared out and organised the workshed, fenced off the trees from the cheetahs, painted and decorated everywhere, and my favourite - made a new sign for reception. The place looked transformed in just a matter of weeks it was amazing to see, and lovely to see how much our hard work was appreciated. I feel like we made a real visual impact on the place, meaning we could leave the place feeling quite proud of what we had achieved.

South Africa wasn't all hard work though. Once the day was over, we would head back to the house and make dinner, have BBQs, drinks, go to local pubs and restaurants... and on one evening we went to the Freedom Festival which had lots of stalls. We had such an amazing time 247 I really miss the incredible things we would see and do each and every day. I was extemely lucky to have found such a fun and worthwhile project to go on.




(Riana, my tours, the evenings, each individ animals, the aims of cheth exp...)

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