Born and raised on a farm near Nylstroom, Sjani spent her childhood years exploring the valleys, plains, gorges and mountain streams of the region on foot with her brother and their dogs in tow.

But her real love for the African bush was cultivated between long school holidays on their family farm in the Sabi Sands Reserve and winter safaris to the Okavango Delta, Chobe and Savuti regions of northern Botswana.

Sjani moved to Pretoria where she completed her high school years and a Diploma in Travel and Tourism but the flooded waterways of the Okavango was beckoning and Sjani started her career in the safari and lodge industry based on the edge of the Moremi Game Reserve. When an opportunity to move to the mountainous deserts of Damaraland in Namibia popped up, she grabbed at the chance to experience something completely out of her comfort zone.
 
Over the years, Sjani also worked in lodges on the edge of the Etosha pan, the desolate Skeleton Coast and on the remote banks of the Cunene River and the Hartman’s Valley. But her love for Botswana soon took her back there where she worked in several camps and lodges throughout northern Botswana.
 
Sjani took a break from bush life in her mid twenties and moved back to the city where she completed a Diploma in Journalism, but crowed city life soon had Sjani longing for the open spaces and the raw, natural beauty of Africa. She spent several months living in the Bazaruto Archipelago region of Mozambique but returned to the bush to manage several remote camps on the wild and unspoilt Busanga Plains of the northern Kafue National Park in Zambia. Sjani also made the banks of the mighty Zambezi River in Livingstone her base for some time. Sjani’s love and passion for the African fauna and flora and her utter love for the tranquility of nature certainly runs deep in her veins.

After travelling and exploring the Southern African continent for the better part of the last 10 years, Sjani has finally returned to her place of birth in the picturesque Waterberg Mountains to settle down just a little and to watch the setting sun splash the cliffs of the mountains a staggering magenta.