Three months ago, a young couple joined Rhulani's team: Sanmari and Martin. Maybe you've already heard Sanmari's nice voice on the phone, or you have seen photos of our "Snake Man" Martin. Let’s get to know our new team members a bit better.

What is the first impression? “It is just perfect here,” they say. Sanmari and Martin recently decided to join our team and thus to live in the African bush together, both professionally and privately.

Sanmari is from Bela Bela in Limpopo and Martin is from Gauteng. The two have known each other for a long time already. “We have been very lucky”, says Sanmari, “we studied together and finished school in Limpopo. The day after writing the FGASA test we got our first job. Together, as a couple, so we were very fortunate”.

The young professionals are not even 22 years old. They are full of energy, curious, and you can see the joy in their eyes of living a life in this unique environment. But what could be improved at Rhulani? Nothing to complain about? 

There is only a shrug of their shoulders, and a smile. “No, nothing”, they say. "It's so beautiful here, the staff here is so helpful, we work together as a team, nothing is too much," says Sanmari. “This was quite different where we worked before,” says Martin, "the former place was falling apart, people were not communicating … we have seen the worst.”

Sanmari actually has a good qualification for a field guide, but is developing more and more into topics such as administration, front of house, reservations or guest relation. "The office here is much different from what I have seen before, as we did not work with travel agents”, she says. 

Martin lives his dream and, after a short introduction period, started to conduct the daily game drives with our guests. He has already made a name for for himself as our "Snake Man". He loves snakes, often finds them in the bush and shows them to our guests – if they like.

He shows his thumb which looks to be in a bad shape. "Two years ago I was bitten by a Puff Adder", he says, “ they had to remove all the broken pieces in the thumb and to recreate the tissue”.

Couldn’t he have lost his hand? "Yes, or the arm," Martin says with a smile. As we can see, he did not lose the passion about snakes because of this incident.

On the days off, the young couple usually goes to visit their parents. That means driving to Bela Bela, to Gauteng, and then back to Rhulani.

Looking to the future, Sanmari says, "We know it's hard to live in the bush and raise a family. That’s why Martin wants to start his own property business”.

And where do they see their life in ten years? The answer comes with no hesitation: “Together, in the bush.”