Lory Park Zoo animal keeper is a family person and a foodie at heart

A primate keeper at Lory Park Zoo in President Park speaks to us about her hobbies, love for food and how she used to be an active child at school.
In this questions-and-answer, Charmaine Ndlovu (23) also delve deeper into her passion for animals and what she is hoping to achieve in the no-distant future.

1. Who is Charmaine, how old are you and where do you currently stay? For how long have you been a primate keeper at Lory Park Zoo?
Charmaine is a zookeeper at Lory Park Zoo from Mpumalanga. I’m currently in Midrand due to work purposes. I’ve been a primate keeper for about three months now but I’ve been working at the zoo for about three years.

2. How would you describe yourself outside work or zoo?
I am always with her family. I’m either catching up with friends or family trying out different restaurants and doing various outdoor activities. At the zoo, I’m a reliable person, hardworking and bubbly person, willing to learn every day.

3. As the primate keeper, what are your day-to-day duties, what have you learnt about that role and how much has it taught you about leadership skills?
It involves feeding animals, cleaning enclosures, and making sure that camps are well maintained. It includes giving medication as instructed by vets or by management. Being a zookeeper teaches me to identify signs that an animal in my care is sick, injured or distressed. I’ve learnt about primates in general, about their nutrition and their behaviour.

4. What do you like to do as a hobby or do for fun such as playing sports, singing, series, painting etc?
I enjoy taking long walks by myself, watching movies or just relaxing with a book. I enjoy doing any outside activities or being adventurous. I love cooking and baking and just being around my friends and family.

5. What did you develop such interest or did someone motivate you into it?
So the outdoor activities, I’ve always been an adventurous person, in high school I was an athlete in different sports like athletics, hockey, etc. The cooking and baking, I found an interest in it growing up watching the women in my family do it, especially my grandmothers and my mother, they enjoy feeding people and I guess I got that from them.

6. Where would you like to see yourself play in the next five years or so professionally?
I would like to have grown more knowledge about the nature conservation industry; I would like to do more for conservation. I want to do my Field Guides Association Southern Africa, I want to be a field guide that will teach people about conservation and wildlife.

7. Do you have any academic background in the current job or it’s different to what you have studied?
I studied Game Ranch Management at the Tshwane University of Technology, I obtained my diploma in May last year [2023]. This course is for people who want to work in a game reserve. I applied to Lory Park Zoo and asked them if I could do my integrated learning here and since then I have fallen in love with animals in a captivity environment, as of now, I’m still enjoying animals in captivity but as I grow, I want to hopefully work in a game reserve.

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