The end of May was quite rough here at DAKTARI. Those of you who came to volunteer with us in the last couple of years will definitely know Lily. She's a duiker that was raised here and then released on our reserve. Every few days she still came into the camp to get some birdseed. [...]
My name is Marjo Kommeren, aged 55 years and I’m Dutch. I stayed at DAKTARI for 4 weeks. I always wanted to come to South Africa, to work as a nurse, but it never happened because I got married, got kids etc. Now my kids are grown up en independent, I decided to go traveling [...]
Back in November, we set up a campaign to collect funds for a new kitchen. A few months later, we are excited to announce that it is finally ready! Anyone that's been to DAKTARI before knows our kitchen wasn't really equipped to cook for big groups of people. There was barely enough room in there [...]
Here at DAKTARI, we are always saving baby animals… some we find and some are brought to us. A few of the most common animals include; squirrels, bats, mongooses, bushbucks, klipspringers and bush babies. Bush babies are my personal favorite. Who wouldn’t love that little face with the big eyes? On March 13th, one of [...]
Saturday March 9th was a big day for Eva Diesel and her brother Steven. The duo came all the way from Corsica a few months ago for their Inside Oaks Project. The Inside Oaks Project is a part of street artist JR's big Inside Out Project. For this instalment of the global art project 72 portraits [...]
On Saturday March 2nd, some of our volunteers went down to The Thirsty Giraffe to participate in a charity dodgeball tournament. The tournament was set up by Scales and all proceeds went to Flying 4 Rhino and the Pangolin Rescue Fund. Six of our volunteers teamed up to conquer the other eleven teams. But their efforts were to no avail [...]
January has been a busy month again for our wildlife orphanage! We welcomed 5 new babies, four squirrels and one klipspringer. The DAKTARI team was first raising the 4 squirrels: Tracy, Morris, Wildy and Lana. These little babies fell from their nest earlier than they should. Some volunteers took care of them and they are [...]
Hi there! My name is Silke, I’m 22 years young and live in Belgium. Normally, I was supposed to stay at DAKTARI for 4 weeks. However, after living my dream for 3 weeks, I realised I wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet and decided to add another 2. I’m sad to say that my adventure [...]
A few months ago DAKTARI Bush School & Wildlife Orphanage applied for the Kudu award, which is an initiative to celebrate the successes and contributions of individuals and groups in conservation management in South Africa. The awards are presented by the South African National Parks as a way of rewarding excellence in conservation by external stakeholders. It [...]
We said goodbye to our two jackals Minnie and JP on Wednesday The nice people from Umoya Khulula Wildlife Centre contacted us to tell us they have a big enclosure available for them and of course we couldn't say no. They came to pick them up Wednesday afternoon and transported our beautiful jackals safely to their [...]
Over the last month, our animal team and volunteers worked hard to renovate a part of our meerkat enclosure. We dug out the old sand, put in some pipes for them to play in, brought fresh sand from the nearby river bed and decorated the enclosure with logs, plants and wooden platforms. Gasper and Tikki [...]
On October, DAKTARI and the Anti-Poaching Unit of the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre (HESC) went to three local high schools (Maahlamele, Rakgolokwana and Leoma) to discuss the terrible crime of poaching and to do an anti-poaching demonstration. Approximately 900 students were present to meet Simon, Corlet and their Belgian Shepherd. Simon first explained what poaching [...]
“Hello. My name is Joshua Hopkins or David as some people called me by my middle name for the first week or so. I am from Scotland and I stayed at DAKTARI for a total of 10 weeks. I really wanted to spend my summer doing something productive and rewarding and as I loved working [...]
"My name is Léna, I am 20 years old, I come from France and I stayed 3 weeks at DAKTARI. I always wanted to do volunteering and I decided in November 2017 that it would be this year ! So I did a huge amount of research on the internet about volunteering, others volunteer’s experiences, organisations all around [...]
I had to do a civic internship for my school, I decided to take this opportunity to realise something special and go abroad. I was already really involved in the children cause around the world with the NGO UNICEF and also in the environmental cause in my all-day life. Then I found DAKTARI, which works at [...]
"My name is Maya, I am a 19-year-old French girl and I decided to volunteer at Daktari for three weeks. I decided to come here by myself to improve my English but also because I wanted to discover South Africa. I started thinking about volunteering a few years ago, but I never had a precise [...]
"Hello ! We are Ophélie and Julie. We are 23 years old and come from Belgium. We stayed at DAKTARI for three weeks. We wanted to volunteer abroad and were looking for a project that was meaningful to us. As future childhood psychologists, we wanted to work with children. Taking care of animals and the environment were other [...]
This month, we renovated the adult mongooses enclosure by adding more logs and plants. The volunteers arranged the enclosure so that it looks more like their natural habitat. Old tyres from the cars were also recycled to make tunnels and provide the mongooses something to climb on. We are adding fresh branches to the enclosure every [...]
Alix comes from Belgium, she is 18 years old and stayed 2 weeks at Daktari. “I was looking for an organisation that would allowed me to work with animals. DAKTARI was the only one that allowed me to feed them, clean their enclosures…And I loved taking care of them. Martin, the cheetah is the most impressive animal [...]
"I decided to come to DAKTARI Bush School with my son, Alexandre,11 years old, to share and experiment with something very different from our everyday life in Europe, through another culture, both with animals care and with children. My best memory at DAKTARI has been to watch my son interact with animals and becoming independent and [...]
"Hello everyone, we are Zoe and Aurea, two 19-year-old french girls who decided to come to South Africa to live the DAKTARI adventure. This place was advised to us by a friend of ours who enjoyed it a lot. We both wanted to volunteer to help people and hearing about this project convinced us. Indeed, having [...]