Education South Africa Project #9825

Environmental Education for over 300 Children

by DAKTARI Bush School & Wildlife Orphanage

Environmental Education for over 300 Children

Project Report | Dec 4, 2012
happy baby-making, a great release & new roommates

By Andreas Boussery | Fundraising manager

Dearest Sponsors and enthusiasts,

Andreas here again, just like last time ;) The only difference is that I now am the fundraising manager for DAKTARI. So basically I try to get us donations so we can keep doing what we do. And thanks to you guys, we can!!! Thanks to you we can help lots of underprivileged children and animals. ;)

First of all, I would like to tell you all about the animal news here at DAKTARI:

A lot of changes have occurred in the last 2 month, we have 3 ostrich eggs in an incubator and 3 tortoise eggs buried under the tortoise enclosure!! Ostrich eggs only take a couple of weeks until they hatch (small chance of survival but we have our fingers crossed) but tortoise eggs take 12 to 18 months!!! So who knows, maybe next year there might suddenly rise 3 baby tortoises out of the ground! :o

Also, a new marmoset monkey named King Kong joined our sweet Princess Maya. He is only a year old and came from a monkey sanctuary nearby. He is very active and jumps all over the place. Luckily Maya is not too annoyed with him and takes very good care of this youngster.

As you know we educate the local children on caring for wild animals. Apparently we are doing a great job! A boy called Willington called us one day saying he saved a baby scrub hare in the village he lives in. The baby’s mum died and Willington decided to give the baby to DAKTARI. We are taking very good care of ‘Willy” and he is growing and doing great.

Scotty and Easy we told you about last time are doing great as well! Easy is free now and comes into camp whenever she is hungry and Scotty had surgery on her broken wing. She is still recovering but there is a very small chance she might fly again. We have our fingers crossed for her!!

Our caracal ‘Zulu’, the one who attacked May and was brought to Makalali for rehabilitation, has been released! He is doing perfectly fine in the wild and is now hanging out in trees so the tourists there can’t see him too often. ;)

If you have been following us on Facebook you probably saw our poll where we were trying to decide on a new name for an animal. A new Bush baby has been born!!! He is still tiny but is taken care of by his mommy. Eventually the Bush baby has been named ‘Diego’.

But DAKTARI is more than just caring for animals. We also focus on education!!

In this matter we got a little help from a volunteer who came to DAKTARI for 2 months. Her name is Agnes Deblangy, she donated a story created by her aunt about an Indian elephant called Nesha travelling Africa. Once here in South Africa he witnesses something that shocks him t the bone: POACHING! He decides to unite all the African animals and scares away the evil poachers. It’s an amazing story with a marvelous life lesson. The children absolutely love it!! They sing along with the songs and are cheer when the poachers are scared from the land.
Thank you Agnes!!!

But this is not the only donation we have received lately…
There were a lot of corporates who were kind enough to help us out!

We have received a LOT of dog food from Hill’s. And we’re very lucky with this since we have 6 dogs, a porcupine and a couple of antelope that truly love this dog food so it disappears quite quickly. ;)

Formalito donated us a camera trap, which takes pictures whenever something moves in its sight. This means we can see all the animals roaming around camp in the night! The children love it, and so do we. ;)

Stihl decided to help us once again. They have donated us more power tools over the years but this time really outdid themselves! They gave us a brush cutter!!! This is incredibly handy if you have a very big camp like ours to take care of and not enough much time to do it ;)

Also, Africa Geographic has caught the DAKTARI-virus. They were kind enough to donate us hundreds of magazines for the children! They love them! And we even gave a couple to our friends at the Green Kids Initiative and the schools in the area.

Madmimi a really good and easy mailing platform has donated us an upgraded account. This way we can easily reach all our contacts for newsletters etc.

And then we have a couple of private donations as well!!!

Gotthif Riexinger organized a party for his birthday and gave all its benefit to Daktari Germany.

Arja and Wilco, children of previous volunteers Anga and Gerrit Dijkhout from the Netherlands organized a birthday party in benefit of Daktari.

We built a new boma where the children have their leaving party and bonfire, this was kindly sponsored by one of previous volunteers, Kayley Flukes who raised $1550 AUD.

One of our current volunteers Lizzy Garland organized a mini-golf tournament before arriving at Daktari and raised $688 AUD.

So there you go, all updated! ;)

In name of all the children, animals, volunteers & staff here at DAKTARI,
Thank you very much for all your support!!!!
We wish all of you a very merry Christmas and happy new year!!

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Sep 18, 2012
New inhabitants, sad passings and a great Kruger

By Andreas Boussery | Office volunteer

The children at Kruger National Park

Hello dearest sponsors,

My name is Andreas; I am filling in as an office volunteer and am happy to update you on everything that has been going on at Daktari. First of all I would like to thank every one of you for your donations and support! It is thanks to you that Daktari can keep helping under-privileged children and orphaned animals. It is thanks to YOU that we can make a difference in this world!!!!

We have quite a few new animal updates ready for you.
The first one would be the release of Gerri Junior, the spotted eagle owl we told you about in the last newsletter. He has been released at Askari, a big game reserve close to us.
Unfortunately our caracal May has passed away. Zulu, who had broken into her enclosure in the night attacked her. It was an extremely sad day for Dakatari and we decided that Zulu was getting too dangerous. He is now being rehabilitated in Makalali, our neighbouring game reserve, where he will then be released.
The pied crow Presley had medical complications, which she unfortunately died from two weeks ago. Let’s hope Elvis recovers from the loss of his best friend quickly.

On a happier note, we rescued a baby Duiker. Duikers are part of the antelope family and this one was found in the middle of the street. After an extensive search for her parents, the people who found her called Daktari. She’s been named “Easy” and she is doing quite well! She loves playing with the little dogs and drinks her milk very nicely.
We also rescued an African Hawk Eagle called Scotty. She flew into a power line and is still recovering from the severe injuries to her left wing. She will most likely never fly again but there is still hope!!! She is starting to hop around more and uses her wings to balance, which is a great sign!!

The children, as always, have been great in the last few months!! We even did another Kruger trip with the winners of the marula trees. They had a great time and were SO excited with seeing and learning all about the wild animals in the reserve. The smiles on their faces when we dropped them back off into the village is exactly why we put all this love and effort in Daktari!!

Well, this is about it, if you have any questions or would like to follow our day-to-day happenings please find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaktariAfrica
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Daktariafrica
Or read or blog on Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/daktaribushschool
and http://www.tumblr.com/blog/daktarianimals

Scotty, the African Hawk Eagle

Easy, the baby Duiker

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Jul 2, 2012
New Homes, Crow Fashion & New Additions

By Andrea Leonard | Office Volunteer

Loki

Greetings from Daktari!!

We have 3 new additions to Daktari since our last update....

Firstly we have May, a female Caracal. She's a big hit with our two male Caracals and teases them through the fence that seperates them!

We were called out to rescue Gerri Junior, a Juvenile Spotted Eagle owl who had crash landed and appeared to have broken her wing. After a trip to the vets we discovered that while it luckily wasn't broken, the ligament damage was so severe that she would never fly again. She now lives with Alex and Sam, our other two Spotted Eagle Owls, and they seem to have accepted her as part of their little family.

We also now have another dog at Daktari, her name is Loki and she is a Bloodhound/Labrador cross. She belongs to Risette, our Outreach Manager and goes to visit the children in the schools with her every week :o)

Presley, one of our Pied Crows had started to pluck her feathers out of her chest, we tried all sorts of lotions and potions to stop her doing this but nothing seemed to work, until we made her a sweater out of a sock! It's a funny sight seeing a black & white crow with a green jumper!! It worked a treat though and now her feathers are beginning to grow back!

The Meerkats have been moved into their new enclosure, they have lots of room now and lots of sand to dig in. The volunteers did a great job painting the walls outside, it looks amazing!

Princess Maya, our little Marmoset Monkey has also been moved into a new enclosure. She now has much more contact with the people and sunshine all day, now she's a happy little Monkey :o)

The staff and volunteers at GVI (Gobal Vision International) held a fundraiser for our Outreach Programme. They pushed their Toyota Hilux all the way from their camp to ours - that's 11k on dirt roads!! Everyone got dressed up and us and all our volunteers joined them for the last road, from our gate, to our camp. Then the kids pushed it over the finish line! It was a great day and they managed to raise over £2000 for the Outreach Programme!

The children, as always have been both a pleasure and a challenge. We recently 16 had children from a VERY poor school, they barely spoke English and all thought that poaching was OK. It was a real challenge for our volunteers. These weeks are very stressful, but these are the children who need us the most. If we can change the minds of just one of these children, it could make such a difference for their future. Knowing that there is another world out there available to them, that is only out of their reach if they let it be, could be the push they need to carve out a better life for themselves and for future generations, instead of following in their parents footsteps to a life of poverty or crime.

Please check out our Facebook page for daily updates from Daktari!

Warm Regards,

The Daktari Team :o)

Gerri Junior

May

Presley in her very fashionable Jumper!!

Shannon & Mmakoma moving Tiki to his new home

The Meerkat's new home :o)

Maya's new enclosure

Daktari Volunteers & kids with the GVI Team

Links:

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