Page 10 Daily Mail, Saturday, August 17, 2019
e
VEN as a little girl
growing up in
Dorset, Samantha
Dewhirst had a
clear vision of herfuture: ‘I knew I wanted to
be a chimpanzee or a vet,’
she laughs. ‘I’ve always
loved primates.’
Aged ten, she had revised her
ambition: ‘One day,’ she wrote in a
note to herself, ‘I’m going to live in
Africa and run a rehabilitation
centre for chimps.’
Today she has strayed only
slightly from that goal: she and her
Scottish-born partner Stephen
Munro live deep in the South
African bush with their daughter
Sophia, who turns four in Septem-
ber, where they run a sanctuary
and rehab centre for baboons.
Their home — remote and beauti-
ful — is an hour’s drive along dirt
roads from the nearest town,
through a wilderness where giraffes,
elephants and impala roam.
Little Sophia has known no other
world. She is being raised in a real-
life safari park alongside the
orphaned baboons — a species
often shot for sport in South Africa
— that her parents nurture before
returning them to the wild.
‘Sophia was grunting like a
baboon before she could talk,’ says
Samantha, 33. ‘She’s never been
fazed by them, although I worried
when she was a newborn about
carrying her in front of them.
‘I thought they might think she
was food. I was concerned they’d
try to take her. But they’re quite
protective of her. Once, an elderly
female baboon heard her crying
and got really angry with me. She
thought I was hurting her.
‘Sophia’s everyday reality couldn’t
be more remote from the average
British child’s. We don’t watch TV
because there isn’t a signal.
Instead, she loves to be outside,
learning about wildlife — giraffes
and elephants are commonplace
to her — and the baboons.
‘She chats to our international
volunteers — she’s learning to
speak French from them — and
every evening we take the baby
baboons for a walk along the river.
‘Sophia loves all this, and she
likes to help me sweep out the
baboon enclosures and bottle-feed
the orphaned babies.
‘She tells me: “When I’m bigger
like this [she raises her arms above
her head] I’ll be able to drink coffee
and look after Oreo.’
Oreo, a mischievous baby baboon
with wide, brown eyes, was
orphaned when his elderly mum
was mauled by a dog.
‘He is now being raised by a
human surrogate — a volunteer at
the sanctuary — before he bonds
with a new baboon mum,’ says
Samantha. ‘He’s started to run,
bounce, chase and tumble, and has
teamed up with a new buddy,
orphan Mandela (aka Hiccup).’
Little wonder Sophia is
enchanted. There are, however,
dangers in this wildlife paradise.
‘We’ve taught Sophia what snakes
and scorpions are. And — like any
mother in the UK — I don’t let her
out of my sight.
‘She used to play with praying
mantises. She’d put them on her
finger and call them Tinkerbell
because they look cute, like little
fairies. But I had to explain that
the females can bite.
‘We’ve also had to reiterate the
message to her that baboons are
wild.’ (Their home is protected by
a metal cage: troops of wild
baboons often jump on the roof.)s
AMANTHA first arrived
at the Centre for Animal
Rehabilitation and
Education (C.A.R.E.), in
the province of Limpopo, in 2006 as
a student volunteer. Later, while
studying for a masters in primate
conservation at Oxford Brookes
University, she returned during a
year out to run an education
project, teaching people how to
value and co-exist with baboons.
Back in the UK, stints working at
a Cotswold wildlife park and
Chessington Zoo, Surrey, followed.
But Africa continued to draw her
like a magnet, and in 2010 she
travelled to the Eastern Cape to
rescue a troop of baboons and
monkeys who’d become homeless
when their sanctuary owner died.
Desperate to rehome them, her
thoughts turned again to C.A.R.E.
Although she knew its elderly
founder, German-born Rita Miljo,
was already hard-pressed finan-
cially, and her sanctuary over-
crowded, she could find no other
saviour for the animals.
So she travelled to Limpopo withher charges and there she met
Stephen. ‘I arrived with my little
troop of baboons and Stephen
rescued us,’ she says. ‘Rita organ-
ised permits, transport and enclo-
sures for the animals and Stephen
treated the animals with the love
and respect they deserved.’
At that point Samantha had a life
— and a boyfriend — in England.
She returned to the UK and took a
well-paid (but dispiriting) job asan investment banker in London.
‘But all I wanted to do was go back
to Africa,’ she says. ‘So when Rita
wrote and said: “Stephen needs
help here. Will you come?” I started
planning my trip.’
She returned to C.A.R.E. in 2011
and eventually ended her relation-
ship with her British boyfriend
because she knew Africa was now
her permanent home.
‘When I told Rita I’d chosen tostay, she said: “I’m sorry for your
boyfriend but I’m so happy for
the baboons”.’
It was not long after that
Samantha and Stephen, 35,
became a couple.
But then catastrophe struck.
Late one summer evening in 2012,
when they were having supper on
the balcony of their hilltop home
with some of the volunteers, they
saw flames lighting up the sky atOn the bottle: Samantha feeds two orphaned baboons
— and gets a cuddle from one of her charges in returnby Frances
Hardy
Playmates: Sophia, nearly four, has had fun with the baboons since she was a baby (above)Pictures: UNBOUND PROJECT/LISA HOFFNER/FOCUSPHOTO