“I was full of adrenaline, ready to go and see the world alone… and be completely free for the first time.”
The Quarterly Gazette interviewed Suriah (Y13): an animal enthusiast, a conservation volunteer and an advocate for making the world a better place.
Having come back to school right after an exciting conservation trip in Kenya, Africa, we talked about her experiences, best moments, and thoughts for the future. You can find her answers (and stunning photos of the trip) below:
Q: How were you feeling when you first started, and did you have any prior experience in volunteering/conservation work before the trip?
Suriah: When I started, I was full of adrenaline, ready to go and see the world alone… and be completely free for the first time. I’ve always felt comfortable with the idea of packing up and travelling to the other side of the world for no other reason than, well, why not?
Of course, that includes the sheer amount of excitement I had from being able to directly help and support struggling Kenyan wildlife.
I’ve grown up around animals and worked with them for most of my life, and I’ve always worked to protect them and their habitats as well as possible. This wasn’t the first time I’d travelled alone, but it was definitely the first time I ever got to travel across Kenya and join an official conservation project by myself.
Q: What were some of your most striking moments during volunteering and conservation work? Were there any setbacks you faced?
Suriah: A few notable examples include:
- Exploring an abandoned mine… until I found intact buffalo skeletons in the pitch-black darkness. I realised I was both in the centre of a hyena den AND that they were still inside it.
2. Watching how a wake [a group of vultures eating carcasses] naturally behave when they find a large kill. I also got to see them establish their hierarchy amongst each other, which was definitely fascinating.
3. Exploring the conservancy [protected area for wildlife] at night and watching a hyena clan, mid-hunt, stalk a lone male buffalo. The buffalo, spooked, charged away as fast as it could, but it actually ran at us instead of the hyenas.
4. I also got to see many giraffe calves exploring the conservancy and testing the boundaries of the site. The Rothschild’s giraffes were our main focus during the conservation project. (You can see them below!)
A setback I encountered was our Jeep getting stuck in an abandoned burrow. We were following a tower [standing/feeding giraffes] of Rothschild’s giraffes, so it wasn’t a great situation. My new friends and I had to rock the car until it finally jolted free, and we had to do this quickly due to a large group of male buffalo.
Q: What were your proudest achievements of the trip?
Suriah: Firstly, building eco-friendly stoves from scratch for the local community, formed out of sand, brick, stone and cement. This allowed locals to cool meals quicker and more efficiently, and they’ll hopefully last much longer than previous methods.
We got to clear an invasive species of cacti using machetes, meaning we had to slice through huge alien plants just to clear the area. Our efforts meant native plants and wildlife could finally recover from the cacti’s oppressive control.
Another achievement was getting the opportunity to join real wildlife rangers on a perimeter check, looking for snare traps to disarm them and keep animals safe.
Q: What did you learn from your experiences, and what advice would you give for others wanting to follow in your footsteps?
Suriah: The most important thing I learnt: just go for it. If you want to make a difference, you have to act quickly on that ambition. For change to occur at the largest scale, there needs to be change at the smallest scale too…
Even if that change is me and my newfound, international friends having sword fights with machetes as a competition to clear the most cacti, it counts.
And if you dream of experiencing true freedom, go. Book that volunteering trip. Let yourself remember what it truly feels like to be alive.
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Suriah’s incredible experiences show us that change starts with one person, action or word, and can soon impact thousands and even millions of people and animals for the better. The next time you want to help make the world a better place, why not start through volunteering or conservation? You might just make a huge impact.
- Daniella, Y10