WORK WITH ANIMALS ON YOUR CAREER BREAK
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Sail all over Europe while gaining the skills and qualifications to skipper a yacht anywhere in the World
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Gap Years for Grown Ups
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 My crush on KenyaLucy Bailey writes... "I was coming to the end of providing maternity cover at an advertising agency in London and had been questioning what on earth I was going to do next. I’d also had a particularly grim time of things in my personal life, so rapidly came to the conclusion that I deserved to spend a few months away getting involved with something really unusual and memorable that I simply wouldn’t be able to organise myself. I’d never been to Africa before and knew relatively little about it, but had worked on a big Kenya advertising campaign and was absolutely dying to see it for myself. I was a little apprehensive about travelling around alone all the time and ideally wanted to get involved in a project of some description, but with the flexibility of not being tied entirely to one place for several months. Let’s just say that The Leap had the contacts and experience to find me the perfect thing to put the smile back on my face and restore my love of being alive! I spent the three months of my placement split between Shompole, a community-based eco-lodge near the Tanzanian border in southern Kenya and Shompole’s new luxury tented camp just outside the Masai Mara. The tented camp was just about to open, so I got stuck in straight away with helping to make the place look perfect, test the menus, trial the game drive routes around the local area with the guides and polish the beautiful chunky wooden furniture! Everyone was really friendly and the staff were a mix of local Masai (most of whom spoke fantastic English and were great at tracking animals but had little or no experience of working with guests), Kenyans from the coast who’d been working in big hotels and the managers, who were white Kenyans and experienced walking guides. When the guests were in camp I helped out with hosting, checking that the room stewards presented the tents beautifully, experimenting with new recipes with the cooks, that sort of thing. There wasn’t exactly much time off, but it really didn’t matter as I was lucky enough to go out walking up onto the gorgeous savannah with some of the Masai friends I’d made or into the more deeply wooded areas with the manager and his rifle (never used by the way, but mighty exciting!). One evening we climbed to the top of a rocky outcrop just in time for sundowner drinks and within minutes an enormous dusty-maned lion and his wife were calling extremely loudly to one another at the base of the rocks - heart-stopping to  hear! Because the camp is in a conservancy group ranch (land owned by several Masai tribes where an agreed part of the guests’ fee goes to the community) we were also able to do the really fun stuff - night game drives. Some evenings you would see nothing but a Grant’s gazelle, but other nights - wow! A leopard hiding in a tree, 10 giraffes running with that slow, graceful gait and six lionesses out hunting. I was also asked to join a drive into the Masai Mara Reserve itself and it really is bursting with game the way you’d imagine it would be. Amazing. However, nothing could prepare me for Shompole lodge itself, a stunning, open-sided, six-bedroomed paradise perched on an escarpment facing dramatic Mount Shompole, right in the unimaginably huge Great Rift Valley. Temperatures reached 36 degrees and dust devils like mini tornadoes swirled across the enormous wilderness, chasing the lines of zebra that hung out at the airstrip. The Masai own 30 per cent of the lodge, a share that will increase as time goes on. They used to hunt the lions here whenever the king of the beasts attacked one of their livestock, but now realise that protecting the game results in attracting more visitors to the lodge and in turn generating more money for their families. My job involved doing regular radio calls to head office in Nairobi, learning how to do the paperwork and generally get to grips with what it’s really like to run a lodge. My room was in a similar gorgeous style to the guests’, the food was excellent and I made some truly wonderful friends in the managers, Kenyans and local Masai. Without a shadow of a doubt, I simply have to go back there some day. One of my best friends came out to visit for 10 days and the managers were more than happy to let me leave to go on safari with her. We had the opportunity to explore more of this diverse, stunning and friendly country and we both agreed that we’d begun a crush on Kenya that we intend to develop! I quite simply couldn’t have had such a rich and rewarding experience without The Leap and I can be a rather cynical girl who’s sometimes difficult to please, so they must have done a good job! I was well briefed before I left, had someone to meet me at the airport and had my travel insurance organised. Both places were extremely remote and The Leap did a brilliant job of keeping my folks informed that I was happy and hadn’t been eaten by something with extremely large teeth. Although The Leap deal with a great many college leavers I would recommend them without hesitation for, let’s say, the slightly older college leaver! I’m 31 now and if I should happen to collide with the number 18 bus on Tottenham Court Road tomorrow I can be happy that I’ve just had the time of my life. I kid you not."  Click here >> to find out more about placements with The Leap Click here >> to email The Leap |
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