I suppose I felt much like Albert Einstein after he developed his theory of relativity and have taken poetic license from his famous quote: “When you put your hand on a hot stove for a second it feels like a week, when you get to spend a week in Africa it feels like a second.”

So much of Africa has changed in recent decades. Yet much has remained unchanged.  Unfortunately, it is that “unchanged” part that is becoming more and more difficult to preserve. Many visitors like myself want to help. Funding is crucial, but money alone is not the answer. For a living, I’m a professional soccer coach. Yet in my heart I am a devoted conservationist.

For the past twelve years thousands of children in New Jersey have come through my year round soccer facility for training. In all my training sessions, I have blended the beauty of soccer with the beauty and necessity of wildlife conservation. Each year, I feature a different endangered animal on the camp T-shirt, and the children respond enthusiastically. I often thought to myself,“Could the international language of soccer actually assist in this tremendously important effort?”It can and it is. But first, let me back up a few steps. Africa is a vast continent defined by conservationists as “safe” and “dangerous” places for animals.

The blanket of vegetation hides another large awkward mammal whose daily ritual is dictated by the ebb and flow of the herds, packs, gaggles and prides. Dotted around the landscape in Botswana are some of the true foot soldiers of wildlife conservation and the people whose grueling work will allow the awestruck to return. 

The research/conservation scientists that live in the bush with the animals are indeed the real anonymous “Crocodile Hunters.” Home to them is a jerry-rigged 12 volt light hooked up to a car battery. A car is needed to drive the 50 feet from the kitchen to the sleeping tents unless you intend to be dinner for a waiting fat cat! Home is checking your shoes for slumbering mambas and tying down anything that moves to stop the baboons from decorating the trees. Home is sleepless nights at the wheel of a Land Rover as you strain and painstakingly observe a pride of lions: “left paw moved two inches,”  “pride male rolled over” and so it goes on night after night, day after day all over Africa entire families live this lonely, spartan existence.

This is coupled with the constant fear of murderous poachers, an unforgiving clientele that would truly rather eat you than look at you, freezing cold nights, blistering hot days, and for what?

It is all in the name of conservation and science. These dedicated heroes paw over every detail establishing how best to conserve the fragile ecosystems and animals that live within them. They do this with shoestring budgets and against mounting odds as locals claim land and increasingly dabble in the highly profitable bush meat trade. Coup d’etats and rebel forces exist in the ranges of many of Africa’s most endangered species. These threats still do not deter the hardened men and women that call the bush home as they continue the endless struggle.

With the world’s preoccupation fixated on terrorism and the economies of some countries still stumbling to their knees much needed funding and attention has been lost for these noble causes. As with tourism in all places Africa has been hard hit by the global drop in vacationers. Safari companies are feeling the pinch and this in turn tightens the noose on local economies that had finally been persuaded to turn to the tourist dollar verses the blood stained currency generated by the poacher and bush meat trade.

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