Daktari Bush School and Animal Orphanage in South Africa

Daktari is situated on a private reserve called Bona Ingwe. Bona Ingwe means "see Leopards" which really sounds great. Unfortunately, leopards are predators and during the night of Monday the 12th of May, a leopard came into the camp and killed Pala. The leopard dragged Pala under the fence to a position about 100 meters from the main house and started to eat her. Ian, on his way to collect the children, noticed that Pala was missing. On his return he and the staff saw the drag marks and followed them into the bush where they found the remains of Pala and the leopard tracks. Pala had three wonderful years at Daktari, when she should have died shortly after birth as she was blind. It is very sad to lose such a wonderful companion and friend but we suppose that it is nature and technically she died of natural causes ! There were many tears that day and still heavy heart today. Pala and us would like to thank the Compton and Morris families for their support toward while Pala was still alive and for their continued support since her demise.

Some villagers caught a pregnant female duiker and tied her up with wire and sacking and tried to sell her for meat. One of our volunteers, Lizzy Dening, heard about this and immediately offered to buy the duiker to try to save it. We know this could encourage the villagers to do it again, just for money, but we wanted to create communication with the local people and to speak about the cruelty of their act. Unfortunately the duiker had suffered so much from stress that he only lived for two days.

One week later, other children from the village found a baby duiker. They caught it and immediately contacted the wildlife club at the school who contacted Daktari and the baby was brought back to the orphanage. The children didn't ask for any money and just called us because they were concerned by the survival of the orphan. After hours of trying, the baby eventually started taking milk and appears to be healthy. We have named her Lizzy after our volunteer.

Anné and Sarel Nieuwenhuizen from Pretoria, have been sponsoring orphaned animals at Daktari for a long time when they actually had never visited the orphanage. Eventually, Ian and Michele had the pleasure to welcome them during the week-end of the 27th of April. This is when Anné met Ima and had the opportunity to give her the bottle. Anné fell in love with our little Ima and sent us an email for adoption as soon as she was back at home.

Thank you Anné and Sarel for your great support and your wonderful company this last week-end

From time to time, Daktari goes out in the nearby town to do some marketing for the project but we never had proper tools to show ourselves. Hanneke decided again to call for help and generously, Expand a sign answered to her call. They provided us with two beautiful banners and you will probably see them sometime in your town ?

Thank you to Expand a Sign for their brilliant support. If you need any advertising material, please contact them, they support us !

http://www.expandasign.com