Into the Wild

A lot of people dream of going on safari one day, but Annie DuPre ’10 did more than just go on one; she became a safari guide after moving to South Africa in 2015 and now is the communications manager for a company there called Bushwise, which trains people to become field guides.

“The goal is to get more people out into the wilderness and to realize they can become safari guides,” she says, adding that an 81-year-old man completed the course just this year. “It’s all about getting people into the bush and into the experience of being around wildlife, learning how to drive a game vehicle and how to be a storyteller and advocate for nature.”

Based in the northeastern South African province of KwaZulu-Natal on the Indian Ocean coast, DuPre and her partner, who is also a trained guide, are just three hours from game reserves in Zululand, where they get to see all Big Five game animals: lion, leopard, black rhino, elephant and African buffalo.

“I’m very fortunate – I go to the bush (on safari), either for work or fun, nearly every other month,” she says, adding that perhaps the most memorable was an overland trip through Botswana in a rooftop-tent vehicle. “We were in the middle of the bush, and there’s nothing around you for dozens of miles – just the great wide open and the night sky. You can hear hyenas calling at a distance and at nighttime, you’re listening to a hyena or a lion or something wandering around the bottom of the vehicle. It’s wild.”

It’s no shock to anyone who knows DuPre and her love of nature that she can often be found in the middle of the African bush. The oldest of two children of a longtime ExxonMobil executive dad and a political consultant mom who worked in the second Bush White House, she grew up in Fairfax, Va., and was usually covered in mud from being outside in nature. Though her parents are both Clemson grads, she fell in love with Charleston and the College on frequent family trips to Folly Beach.

A political science major and African studies minor, she studied abroad at Stellenbosch University, near Cape Town, South Africa, her junior year in 2008. Post-graduation, she did two stints with AmeriCorps before earning a master’s in international relations in 2015 at the University of Texas at Austin, which included another study abroad in Cape Town. After picking up her graduate degree, she beelined it straight back to South Africa and is now working on another master’s on the African wild dog, her “absolute favorite creature.”

“I don’t think my parents would say they were surprised that I decided to jump ship and go to one of the last places in the world that has the biggest collection of different predator species or all of the megafauna that we have here,” she says. “It’s always sort of been in my blood.” – Tom Cunneff