Volunteer Story – Andrea Pieroni

My name is Andrea Pieroni and I’m from Watt, Switzerland close to our largest city, Zurich. My country is 20 times smaller than Namibia and has about 42,000 sq km compared to Namibia with 812,000 sq km.

I was always interested in wildlife, especially the big cats. When I was in South Africa in 2006 and saw a cheetah, I immediately fell in love with this animal. When I went home, I started to get more information about how to help and volunteer for cheetahs. I found the homepage for Earthwatch and saw the opportunities at CCF. Due to my job (IT consulter) I could not become a volunteer until this year.

I am happy to be here and escape from the rain and cold in my country. At CCF, I like to do all the necessary work and not just the work involving the cheetahs. I enjoy doing whatever is needed to do in order to help run this beautiful place. Of course I would want to be with the cheetahs all day, but I learned that CCF is more than just cheetahs.

I have worked very hard on camera trap data entry where I have been able to see what animals are doing throughout the day and night. There are funny pictures too, like a warthog that was smiling into the camera. I also loved doing the evening game counts where we record all the species we see on the drive. When I did the waterhole count, I had the chance to observe giraffes: 1 female and 3 younger males drinking from the waterhole.

I look forward to my next project at CCF as well as my next plan in life. It is hard for me to go back to my cold country and work behind a computer screen all day. But I still have a dream to come back to this beautiful place and revisit all the wonderful people I have met here. I especially want to thank Belinda Hans (CCF Administrator) and Brian Badger (CCF Operations Manager) who helped make my dream come true.

Thank you all and I wish I could stay here longer.