Animal Keeper's Association of Africa

My name is Tumelo Moeti and I m 27 years of age, My work started on the 1st of March 2006.  Before that I was involved in some environmental projects. This year was one of my interesting year for me. For the first time in 5 years I got to visit other zoos— Pretoria,JHB zoo and Emerald zoo. I also like to thank friends of the zoo for the opportunity that they have given me to do this.

I am a zookeeper at the Bloemfontein zoo.  I was not even aware that keepers are among the most respected people all over the world, and I’m very proud of it. I am also one of the hard workers who believes in myself.  I love the job that I am doing, I can also work with many animals but snakes are more awesome to work with. On our visit to Pretoria I met a very energetic lady her name is Robynn and she is the one who introduced me to the AKAA organization.

I was so surprised and shocked to hear that there was an organization like this, but I also don’t blame them maybe it was the lack of info at my zoo and I am very happy to be a member of AKAA. We really learned a lot from the other zoo and when we came back my life turned to the other direction which I did not know about, that means loving and caring more about animals even supplying them with their needs. We have learned more about record keeping and animal enrichment which is also very interesting. I have always liked to play with my creativity on some of the enclosures but without knowing that some of the animals would respond in a very exciting manner without even knowing, those workshops have really helped me a lot to realize many things.

We met again on the 11th till 14th of November 2010.  We did some of the enrichment is some enclosures and it was very simple and easy to do and animals responded very well and the one which was very interesting was the one at the primates. We have done a long term enrichment structures on the debrassa enclosure and still they have responded very well. It was my first time standing in front of more than 30 people giving them talks about my enrichment in the rhinos enclosures and I also think I am the first person who worked at the Bloem zoo to enrich the rhinos enclosure after a long period of time and to me it was very exciting by the reaction I got from those rhinos. 

But the saddest thing that happened to me the past year, I was having a problem with my health status and visited doctors being in and out of the hospital. Then to my shock I was told that I got an allergy to animals.  It was so unbelievable to me till I was on medication.  I have therefore been transferred to Navel hill game reserve which has an open space and for me I felt no challenge there. But because I loved what I was doing at the zoo, I visit often to go and do some enrichment in some enclosures.