About Us By Bookey Peek

We are presently hiding away amongst the great granite kopjes of our wildlife sanctuary in Zimbabwe’s north-western Matobo Hills, hoping that the current wave of land invasions will pass us by. We have lived in this magical corner of Africa for twenty years and every day is an unending source of wonder and joy, despite the constant uncertainty about the future. In another life, I trained and practiced for a few painful years as a solicitor, but my real love is the bush and writing, for which our sanctuary Stone Hills has given me endless material. My first book, All the Way Home was published in the UK and elsewhere, and its sequel Wild Honey was released in 2009.

Richard, my husband, is a biologist, photographer and latterly, a film maker. His film Honey Badger: Raising Hell was distributed by National Geographic TV Int. in 2009, and he is now working on the sequel. We are both professional guides. Throughout the years, we have raised numerous orphaned and injured animals, and we’ve discovered that every one of them, no matter how small or apparently insignificant, will teach you something, once it opens the doors to its own world. But you can’t just march in uninvited, you have to earn the keys to that door with love, understanding, respect - and patience, lots of it. And when you are rewarded with the trust of that animal, there is no greater privilege on earth.



Two particularly notable personalities have been our warthog, Poombi, whom we raised and successfully released back into the wild (much to her indignation). The other was Mr. Badger (or Badge) an orphaned honey Badger - a species with an horrific reputation. One writer called them “the meanest animals in the world”, and in African tradition, Mantswane is more to be feared than a leopard or a lion. In fact, we found the exact opposite. No one could have been more loveable or devoted to his foster family. These days, we share our home with an ancient banded mongoose, two baby squirrels, two eagle owls and a family of bushbuck, with plenty of other non-human visitors who wander in and out of the house at will. Humans have to wait to be invited!

Like the Born Free foundation, we too believe very strongly that wild animals belong in the wild – and that the preservation of their habitat is as crucial as the preservation of the animals themselves.

Life in Africa:








Tomorrow what makes the Honey Badger so special...