Our emigration: Muscovite moved to Zimbabwe and is caring for elephants

36-year-old Olga Demidova was previously engaged in public relations in Moscow, and now she lives like heroes of Gerald Durrell's stories: on a farm in a distant country, surrounded by elephants, dogs, squirrels and other animals.

Photo: Instagram / olia_demidova

She told the story of emigration and life in Zimbabwe to the publication Billboard Daily.

Why africa

When acquaintances hear that I have moved to Zimbabwe, they usually ask why it is there, and not, for example, in Berlin? I usually answer that moving to Berlin in my life was also there, and from him to Zimbabwe, as it turned out, was within reach.

Actually, the first time I got to Africa was absolutely random 4 a year ago, when I was still working in a small but successful Moscow PR agency, and heels and social events were an integral part of my life. One of our clients was Yury Kolokolnikov, who after filming in the fourth season "The game of thrones" went out to the Hollywood arena. At one of the parties of the Moscow Film Festival, I introduced him to people who had a burning desire to bring him to the African Fashion Week in Zimbabwe. The idea at that time seemed fun, but too crazy.

However, closer to the fall, it was still decided to go. After three days of local shows, interviews with the press and parties, we fled to the forest - the rest of the day’s 3 trip lived in tents on the territory of a safari park next to lions and elephants. With me, I had only shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops. Let amid carefully collected elderly Europeans in their safari gear And with large professional cameras, I looked ridiculous with iPhones, but this did not prevent the trip from becoming one of the best in my life. I will never forget the feeling of absolute magic when you encounter an elephant in the wild for the first time in your life. Exactly from this moment I fell in love with Africa - madly and forever.

Photo: Instagram / olia_demidova

Elephants, movies, love

After 3, I moved from Moscow to Berlin. Having thrown off a bad PR, I decided to try myself in the film industry. At some point, it was possible to go to Zimbabwe with one aspiring director to help her take the first full meter, I didn’t hesitate for a long time.

The first stop was a nursery for wild animals, orphans. Wild is life and entering it Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery - one of the few nurseries of this kind in Africa and the only officially registered in accordance with international standards in the country. In 1998, he was founded on her family farm by Roxy Dankwerts - seemingly fragile, like Audrey Hepburn, a woman who immediately impressed me with perseverance and an excellent sense of humor.

She began her work 20 years ago, when an antelope strayed to her yard, and today, under the strict supervision of Roxy and her team, they live near 150 animals, from rare pangolin (a battleship-like mammal) and lions who grew up in a house with her sons to tiny elephants. All employees are absolutely absorbed in business: when a new baby elephant arrives or a small giraffe falls ill, Roxy herself often sleeps next to them at night, checking the dropper and the temperature of the babies.

The hostess was helped by her son Jos, with whom we immediately became friends and who helped our film crew very much in organizing a difficult route. Now it sounds ridiculous, but after finishing the shooting in the nursery, I declared my readiness to marry Jos if I lived in Zimbabwe. Our journey was coming to an end, we were tired, radically sleepy, tanned and weather-beaten, but I didn’t leave a feeling of wild happiness and a willingness to pass and drive as much again, see more.

Photo: Instagram / olia_demidova

A couple of days before I left, I said so: I don’t want to leave - and that’s it! On what the director and best friend wisely advised to listen to the heart and stay, just want this. Jos happily offered to stay with them for another couple of weeks, and, having sent the film crew back to Europe, I stayed. The next time I went home after a year to introduce my mom to my future husband, Jos.

Life on an African farm

The farm is located half an hour from the capital Harare, it was founded in 1935, Jos's great-grandfather, Viktor Dankverts. As a doctor, he came from Europe to South Africa, and from there he moved to then Rhodesia. So Jos is the fourth generation of Zimbabweans. The main man on the farm is Jos's dad, Craig. He grows flowers and tobacco for export. As it turned out, a large number of flowers that fall into Europe and Russia from Holland, in fact, are brought there from Africa and Latin America. About 2 000 people live and work on the farm, there is even a primary school for local children.

The nursery for animals is located right there, next to the master's house, he is self-sufficient. Caring for animals is not only a laborious hobby (staff around 130 people, including family), but also quite expensive: visitors help pay bills for veterinarians and food for animals. For them, the cattery is open 5 days a week in the afternoons. For schools we open the doors of the nursery in the morning - it is very important for us to bring up children culture of care from an early age. The basic philosophy of this place is well expressed in the African saying “Little by little becomes a lot»: There is always something to do and learn, there is no place for laziness. For Roxy, the life of each animal is important - no matter if it is a protein or a hyena.

Photo: Instagram / olia_demidova

But the most difficult, perhaps, is working with elephants. They arrive at Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery at a tiny age, when they are still dependent on mother's milk. Unfortunately, in the wild, other elephants do not accept babies who have lost their mother, therefore the task of Roxy and the handlers is to replace them with them. The formula of baby food has been developed over the years, because ordinary cow's milk is deadly for elephants. Few veterinarians specialize in elephants of this age, and, of course, the most difficult thing is to lose a baby, which you watch 24 hours a day and that becomes literally native.

Elephants are amazing animals: their life cycle is very similar to the human, they are incredibly sociable, take care of newcomers. They also have a great sense of humor: you have to see how Moio, our first baby elephant, steals cabbage from giraffes and blows bubbles in the shell. The elephants sleep in a manger, and in the morning they leave, accompanied by handlers (people who take care of animals), to walk into the forest. After lunch, they usually bathe in the pond and are closer to 16: 00 return home. Roxy's main dream is to bring the little ones back to the wild, so now we are preparing a camp near Victoria Falls in the north-west of the country for their relocation.

Photo: Instagram / olia_demidova

In the kennel about 150 animals. Including 9 lions, 5 giraffes, 7 elephants, many antelopes of kudu and dike, impalas, two hyenas, a wildebeest named Noodle, aka Lapsha, - this one considers itself a full member of the family and periodically enters the house. The owners more than once, having woken up in the morning, found Noodles in their bedroom. There are still monkeys warthog Pickles is a female resembling a stern Soviet accountant, Molly and Monty's parrots and the main cockatoo Charlotte. From Charlotte gets to all the dogs in full: her favorite activity is to drive them into the kitchen where she lives. There are still three cheetahs living — some kind of retired people welcoming guests at the entrance to the kennel’s territory — and pangolin Marimba - she lives on the farm 9 for years and does not part with her handler Matteo.

Daily routine and work

Jos and I live in a lodge in 10 walking distance from the parent. Getting up here, as on any farm, is early in 6: 00 Jos goes to work with elephants, and I rush to feed the antelopes (they come for bananas every morning to the garden gate) and Joe the squirrel, who happily jumps on my head. She was handed to me for upbringing when I first arrived: she fell out of the nest, was so small that it was placed on my palm, and did not resemble those fluffy squirrels that frolic in Neskuchny Garden. The first days of Joe lived in a box of cream Jo Malone - hence her name - and slept next to me. Feed her had, like any newborn, every 2 hours from a tiny pipette. Now it has already grown, and we plan to release it in the near future, although something tells me that we will still see it often anyway. This has already happened with monkeys: somehow Roxy released them all into the big world, but they returned back to the aviary by the morning.

After breakfast, I walk my dog ​​- a pit bull named Badger; since childhood she is friends with all animals and even raised herself kudu antelope by the name of Maus. Following we go to the office located on the territory of the nursery, I check the mail and work on the daily affairs: I am responsible for my connections with the media out of old habit, so all requests for interviews and shootings are under my responsibility. If there are no meetings, Jos and I are going to check our other project - a nursery with trees. In general, a rare day on a farm looks like the previous one - you never know what will happen today, whether a long-awaited giraffe will be born (the “long-awaited” in this case is not an exaggeration - it bears his giraffe for a year and a half), whether the Chinese president decides to come or visit save a new baby elephant. In this case, we equip the aircraft after collecting all the signatures and permits, and time does not tolerate here - every hour is critical. In the evenings, when everything is redone, we can join the guests of the nursery: there are very interesting people from different parts of the world, some of them become our friends.

Photo: Instagram / olia_demidova

Country

The main thing that you have to learn right away is patience and a sense of humor, otherwise there is no way. No one here is in a hurry, and the afternoon nap is holy. Local people strongly believe in magical powers, and often on the front page of the newspaper you can see the headline about how a woman gave birth to a frog, or news from a neighboring village that one girl had turned into a snake. A very reverent attitude to wild animals - for killing a python, for example, can be planted on 9 years. Or here's a rare pangolin beast - all pangolins officially belong to the president, considered sacred and bringing good luck.

In general, arriving in Zimbabwe, many are surprised at the quality of life. There is very good medicine and education, a system of private schools. True, everything is quite expensive due to the high import tax, including products in supermarkets and clothing. Therefore, many go shopping in South Africa. At first it seemed strange that in the nearest big city to us, Harare, there are no people on the streets. The fact is that no one just idly walks, especially the white-skinned population, which in the country, by the way, is less than 1%. We are a racial minority here - despite the fact that in principle Zimbabwe is safe (compared to South Africa, for example). Without a car in the country there is nothing to do - there is no public transport at all. But on the farm, this problem is absent - walk in the fields, how many will fit. We also spend a lot of time in Victoria Falls, a small resort town where 12 000 people live and a lot of monkeys, warthogs and mongooses live on the streets.

Photo: Instagram / olia_demidova

Jos is younger than me, but he is much more mature and smarter than many of the guys I met before. I don’t know if this is parental upbringing, or maybe the fact that from his very childhood he studied at boarding schools (private boarding school) here and in South Africa: with their almost army laws you quickly grow up. Jos studied for a long time as a gemologist (gemology is the science of gems), but after working in the diamond industry in Mozambique, he decided to turn closer to nature and environmental protection. Strange as it may seem, the Russians from Zimbabweans, former Rhodesians, have a lot of similarity - hospitality, a keen sense of humor (apparently, from the political system in the state) and a wide soul. So Jos turned out to be much closer in spirit than many Europeans.

With the move to Zimbabwe, my life, of course, completely changed - not only did I find love, home, and family, and I changed my life dramatically, in part, my priorities also changed. I learn a lot from Roxie and Jos. Only here I really understood how fragile life is and how important it is to appreciate it. And here the perception of time has changed, even though we work a lot and get tired of the order, but for some reason there is always the opportunity to exhale, inhale, look around, feel alive, dream. For example, that our elephants could still return to the wild, so that this year we planted not 200 000 trees, but at least half a million, and that in the future we could grow the fifth generation of this family, of which I was fortunate enough to become.

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