Tebogo Manamela talks to Lucas Ledwaba about helping to preserve Africa’s heritage and the rewards of working with – and sometimes being attacked by – animals at the Kruger National Park
When most people think of a career in a facility such as the Kruger National Park they tend to think about tourism. How did you end up as a veterinary technologist?
I only joined the organisation in 2013 and as a village girl and someone who studied to work in the laboratory, I had little information about conservation. Poaching has become a menace in the park and Africa as a whole. The rhino as well as the lion populations in the park have decreased tremendously and this is affecting everyone, I believe.
It’s never easy to relax in my field , we work long hours, especially in winter — as its capture season as it is safer for animals to be immobilised and translocated when it’s cool — and we must also respond to emergencies at all times. To think of it, this is the most difficult question to answer. [Laughs.] I am also a mother of a six-year-old girl and have just completed my MSc so things just got easy for me because I can now visit friends and family without worrying about my work and studies.
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