Matios Sibongo (33), a graduate of the Tracker Academy completed his one-year internship on Bergplaas in 2015, during which time he completed the three-week Spirit of the Wild Programme. "I am a San person and my first language is a San dialect called Khwedam. I am highly proud of it. It is one of the only surviving San languages, most are extinct," says Matios who was born in Namibia and grew up in a remote rural area called Schmidtsdrift in the Northern Cape.
"The Tracker Academy was a great experience for me because the San people are famous for their tracking ability but this had been lost in my generation. On the Tracker Academy course, we tracked lion, elephant, leopard, antelope, and I fell in love with tracking. I also learnt about very different environments, from the Karoo to the bushveld. "After I graduated I was put in contact with Wayne Maspero of Bergplaas and this was another great opportunity and adventure for me. It was hard physical work on the nature reserve, and the most exciting activity for me was game capture. Bergplaas is a spectacular extravaganza of nature, with beautiful mountains and vast, open grasslands. It blew my mind when I first came here and it took me some time to learn about the different Karoo biomes."
"The Spirit of the Wild course was also very exciting. I had never come across the term 'intuition' and I also never knew that people meditate in so many ways to access inner wisdom, to free the mind and to connect with the wild. "I started to look at life in a different way. When I walked around, and saw birds or animals, I saw them in their own kingdom, just as we are in our human kingdom. I felt humbled and a deep respect. It was like meeting a new person from a new culture, you engage with them with humility and respect. "As for my future, I'm hoping to work as a guide on a nature reserve in Mpumalanga Province. I am a man who likes a challenge and adventure, and these past few years have been a big adventure and a great challenge for me."