ISV - De Widlt Cheetah Conservation Project in South Africa

This experience was so out of my comfort zone and going in I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I remember being so incredibly nervous in the JFK airport. My ISV group was meeting by our flight gate and I has so anxious and scared, I sat alone by Jamba Juice listening to calming music and trying to distract myself from my nerves in a smoothie bowl. When I finally gathered the courage to meet my group, I was immediately fascinated and engulfed in these new friends. We shared stories about our lives and our expectations and joked about how unprepared we felt for this great adventure. Over the next two weeks, these people became so special to me. Each of us were completely new to South African culture but we were all eager to jump into this new world and take on any task that was thrown at us. We built roads and mixed bowls of raw horse meat with our bare hands, we painted wildlife enclosures and had our body and clothes forever stained with paint, we got to experience wild cheetahs up close and develop relationships with these animals (my favorite will always be a cheetah named Zoro, who took a liking to me the moment we met). At nights, we would all gather in the Cheetah Lodge and write in our journals, play games and puzzles, paint, play volleyball, joke and laugh and create memories. We got to explore Hartbeespoort, hike the oldest mountain in the world, eat the most amazing meal at a local Herbal Garden, and zip line. These experiences, the satisfaction of knowing we truly made a different at the De Wildt Cheetah Center, and the relationships that bloomed over these two weeks changed my life and I would do anything to experience it again. I have never had to say a goodbye as hard as the ones I had to say to those people I met in South Africa as I boarded the plane back to the States. If you have an insatiable need to serve and explore the world, I highly recommend traveling with ISV.