WHY SOUTH AFRICA?
THE FARM INN COUNTRY HOTEL
& WILDLIFE ESTATE
SOUTH AFRICA Blog Series
SOUTH AFRICA Part 2: The Farm Inn & Wildlife Estate
SOUTH AFRICA Part 3: Walking with Lions
SOUTH AFRICA Part 4: Johannesburg
In February of 2019, my roommate Grace and I spent seven days of our Lunar New Year holiday break in the beautiful, friendly, summer-y, and wild country of South Africa! It was my first time back on the African continent since my family moved away when I was a preteen, and I was beyond excited! My hope for this trip was moments of wonder, laughter, and lots of animals! Our first stop was a three day safari in the wilds of Kruger National Park. We had an incredible experience with Africa Spear Tours which you can read about HERE. After closing the page on our incredible wild safari adventure, we headed toward the city of Pretoria. WHY SOUTH AFRICA?I can’t introduce you to the next leg in our trip without first explain how we ended up in South Africa in the first place. The year is 2005, and I am a 14 year old girl living back in my passport country (USA). I love horses, books, and movies. I want to work overseas and become a wildlife conservationist when I grow up. Steve Irwin is my hero and Aslan is my favorite character of all time. In my day to day, I fight with my siblings and I am always being grounded for disrespecting my parents. You have to understand that, at this point in my life, the thing I remember most is being angry at the world. I am homesick for Senegal. My public school classmates call me “Africa girl” and laugh. No one understands me and I feel completely alone in the world. One day, I watch a film called “Duma”. To tell you the truth, I can’t remember how I saw the movie. I think my mom must have bought or rented it and brought it home for a family movie night. You’ve probably never heard of this movie, but I think you should go watch it. Watch the trailer for "Duma" For those of you that won’t watch it, however, “Duma” tells the story of a Xan, a fun and outgoing young boy growing up in rural South Africa. His father works the land, his mother homeschools him, and he spends his days playing under the warm African sun alongside an orphaned cheetah cub his family rescued. Get it yet? I think there was something that felt so beautifully familiar to me about Xan’s happy life. As always happens in a great kids adventure movie, tragedy strikes and suddenly Xan finds his entire world ripped out from under him. He is forced to go to the city, give up his life of freedom and sunshine, and he finds himself enrolled in public school where the students see him as an outsider... someone to taunt and bully. 14 year old me watched this film and felt a total connection to the loss and hurt Xan was facing at this point in his life. I understood the childhood he had been robbed of and I found myself wishing I could do what he did. Xan makes a decision. He takes his cheetah Duma and they run away together. They flee the city and Xan decides to go on a quest to return Duma to the homeland he lost when he separated from his family as a cub. Even as a young girl, I wholeheartedly understood that the journey Xan undertakes is about so much more than releasing Duma back into the wild. Yes, he wants his friend to return to a life where he can live freely the way he was intended to live, but it’s more than that. Xan’s adventure is born out of a desire to make sure that Duma doesn’t lose his home, a piece of his heart. Xan longs to prevent Duma from losing the freedom and happiness that he himself feels he has lost… but saving the things you love are never easy. Duma is a story about sacrifice, bravery, friendship, and finding home in the people we love. Honestly, this film was life-changing for me. I can’t watch it, to this day, without crying… Yes, I’m a softie and animal movies get me, but still… I can’t underestimate how big of an impact this film had on my life. I think one of the most incredible aspects of the film was how the young South African actor starring in the film, Alexander Michaeltos, was so comfortable with the cheetah. No fear, no trepidation, just a bond that goes beyond a performance. After some research and “Behind the Scenes” clip viewing, I learned that Alexander was so comfortable with the cheetahs because his family owns a Bed & Breakfast that shares its grounds with their own Wildlife Estate called The Farm Inn. Alexander had grown up with all the big cats, lions, tigers, cheetahs, and leopards right in his backyard. When visiting the inn’s website there were countless photographs of the Michaeltos children swimming with tiger cubs, walking with lions, and snuggling with cheetahs as they grew up. It was shortly after making this discovery I decided one day, I would go to South Africa and I would stay at The Farm Inn & Wildlife Estate and 'pay homage' to the film (and the family) that had made such a big impact on my youth. Anyways, this is a long explanation to explain how one day in the Fall of 2018, I shared this long time dream of going to South Africa and visiting the inn with my roommate. I remember that Grace didn’t miss a beat and said, “Dude! That looks amazing! Let’s go together for Chinese New Year!” Almost then and there we made a plan. THE FARM INN COUNTRY HOTEL |
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