MARINA (TATI) OLIVER - a little about myself
Sanjan Tanzania will be branching out in the coming years and aims to be part of the solutions that work here because with commitment, honesty, realism and respect we can achieve so very much.
Born in Lugano Switzerland in 1960, I grew up and did most of my studies there. In 1994 I decided that the place had become too small and the comfort of an easy life and a good job was not what I was looking for. I needed new horizons, I needed a real challenge. My sister Daniela was working in Botswana at the time so I went to visit her.
I was hit by the perfumes of the African Continent and her soils as soon as I got off the airplane and knew from the very beginning that Africa held a very special spirit; I sensed whole landscapes alive with the present, a feeling of right now and of expectation overwhelmed me! Little did I know then that I was going to spend more time on this continent than I had ever thought possible.
I now live and work in Arusha Tanzania but my first love became the Okavango Delta spending a couple of years there helping to run the Elephant Back Safaris’ “Abu Camp” with my sister Daniela and the infamous Randall Jay Moore. It was an incredible introduction to the world of upmarket safaris and it gave me very fond memories.
I felt I needed to say thank you to Africa and its people for all the amazing experiences this continent had given me. This took me to Madagascar where I worked for over a year with the NGO Foundation Suisse Madagascar on the Eastern side of the island Nosy-Be.
www.fsmsuisse.org
The organisation was involved in educational, medical and tourism projects. Madagascar is another wonderful country full of friendly and gentle people, music, intense perfumes and magic stories. At that time I thought I had found my home and did not need to move any more.
I then travelled by vehicle overland from Southern Africa to Cairo and back on a recognisance expedition trip which needed to establish routes safe enough to walk trained elephants from Europe to Botswana for an elephant conservation awareness campaign.
This journey with a good friend of mine opened the new horizons I was looking for, but also, by driving thousand of miles along roads constantly crowded with people, I realised that as much as I loved to live in the bush in a natural paradise like the Okavango Delta and in such a privileged situation, I felt somehow trapped in a golden cage and developed a strong desire to contribute, to give back a little.
But Africa always surprises and shortly there after I went to visit my sister again, she had decided to move from Botswana to East Africa. She was looking for a travelling companion on the long drive North to Kenya and as we drove together for that first few weeks I had little idea that my life would be taking a dramatic change. When we got to Arusha in Tanzania she introduced me to her friend Paul Oliver, a safari guide and the owner of Oliver’s Camp in Tarangire. Straight away I felt at home in Tanzania and to cut a not too long story short, Paul and I married a couple of years later. Together with Paul I ran Oliver’s Camp and organised wilderness camping safaris but as I got to know Tanzania better my interests developed away from the world of safaris.