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Fairness Moyana in Hwange
A HWANGE secondary school teacher has defied the odds by offering the first wild tour safari and guiding lessons in the coal-mining town that also offers foreign languages.

Mr Mark Bhebhe who is an Ordinary and Advanced Level Languages teacher at Hwange Government High School recently opened doors to youths who wanted to venture into professional hunting and tour guiding.

Mr Bhebhe who is the chief executive officer of Footprint of the Wild Tours and Safari, a company he founded with his wife, Erica Sauramba told Chronicle that this initiative was meant to empower youths with skills as well as promote domestic tourism.

“My wife and I started this company mainly with a focus on tours and travel before the Covid-19-induced lockdown which brought with it its own fair share of challenges was turned into an opportunity for us to venture into offering wild tour safari and guiding courses. We started in 2019 and by then it was just trial and error. We hadn’t really established roots in the tourism industry and there were issues to do with registration so we were a bit hesitant about the whole idea. However, this year we decided to make it professional and registered and started our operations from there despite the fact that we had challenges with the coronavirus, which affected international tourism and everyone else,” he said.

Mr Bhebhe’s wife Erica Sauramba

Mr Bhebhe said he was also a professional guide, hence he decided to work on tour guide classes.

He said the courses they offer are meant to capacitate youths in Hwange as most complain that they are excluded from the tourism sector.

Mr Bhebhe said he decided to use his ability to speak foreign languages such as Spanish and Portuguese to introduce a unique flair to his classes.

“I majored in Spanish which I take as an advantage and one of the reasons I ended up venturing into tourism. I noted that there is no language that I’m teaching that I would use probably in a profession as a teacher. So I said why not use it somewhere else where it would best suit the situation so I decided to use it in the tourism industry where it’s more viable. I believe we are different in the sense that while other companies were grounded as a result of the pandemic due to their focus on tours and travels, we managed to drift afloat with the offering of courses,” he said.

Mr Bhebhe added that his company was supportive of Government’s drive to promoting domestic tourism, a concept that he was taking advantage of.

Mr Mark Bhebhe, a teacher, has established the first wild tour safari and guiding school in Hwange town that also offers foreign languages to prospective tour guides. In the picture, he (far left) poses with some of the trainees on the programme

“You realise that recently Government launched the ZimBho initiative where they are trying to promote domestic tourism and we are saying we are also open to that where anyone who wants to visit Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park we can offer services along those lines where we can transfer you from one place to another,” he added.

The company is conducting its classes at Hwange Government High school.