Jennie was born in England and grew up in South Africa and Rhodesia. She and her husband and children went farming during the bush war of the seventies and eighties. Her love of Africa and its animals was born during that time.
She left Zimbabwe and went back to South Africa in 1981. She left Africa with a heavy heart to go back to Britain after a career in advertising in 1998.
Once back in the UK, I set up a marketing agency and then a publishing company with Dr Des Fernandes called Fernro Publishing Ltd.
I have written and published eight skin care books with Des and three novels by myself. My first novel is called Motohuma the Firehead, and is set in what was once Rhodesia, and is now Zimbabwe.
On a visit to Africa I volunteered to help Rhino Art, teaming myself with Grant Fowlds, Kingsley Holgate and Richard Mabanga in the conservation education of our Youth in the Rhino Art programme. Having spent many years living in Africa, I am now associated with rhino conservation through Project Rhino, a charity dedicated to saving the rhino and other endangered species. I have used my communication skills to build websites and write for the charities I support. Rhinoart is one of those websites. I have a special interest in photography and video making.
Acts of Kindness and Compassion to Humanity in Africa
Jennie offered to help my media reach at a talk in London in April 2019 to be held with Wilderness Foundation at the Cavalry and Guards, Piccadilly. She had met the incredible Sangoma Makhosi Ntshangase before and wanted to hear the Zulu perspective of Rhino meanings in the indigenous sense.
Makhosi Ntshangase (pictured below) had some health problems in 2021 and had her leg amputated above the knee. Jennie rallied her friends and raised sufficient money for her to consider prosthesis and survive her lonely life near Shakaland in Eshowe KwaZulu Natal.
In 2019 Jennie met retired business man Gideon Israel and she told him about her rhino conservation work in South Africa – the land of his birth. His parents had left the country due to apartheid.
Gideon kindly donated a sum of money to enable the Loziba incubation to happen on a property called Zoekmij on the proposed Loziba Wilderness reserve near Gluckstadt in Kwazulu natal. Jennie then designed and developed the reserve’s web site, www.loziba.com, with her talents pro bono.
Mdiceni Gumede was Ian Player’s close friend for many years, dedicating his life to animal conservation in the Imfolizi Wilderness. When he retired he was told by government officials that he couldn’t have a pension because they believed he was dead. Jennie donates a monthly sum to help him to retire with a degree of security and dignity.
Read my Blog on Story Telling with Mdiceni Gumedi around the Fire. He is residing in Macibini with his children and Grandchildren and active daily in his food garden.
With all these Acts of Kindness I would like to give credit to Jennie as a loyal friend, servant of humanity, Philanthropy and generosity for going above and beyond as being a fine example to us all.