We always go further together.

Hi, I’m Emma, but my friends call me Bucket. I help with the communications at Tofauti; I love being behind the scenes and cringe at the thought of being mentioned on a website bio or being in the spotlight. I prefer animals, colourful sticky notes, to do lists, and khaki! These are often synonymous with the word ‘boring’ but I’m also sports crazy (so maybe not so boring).

Teamwork, hard graft, sportsmanship...these are things that make me tick. Friends made on the sports field are often very special, treasured ones and this is how I met the founder of Tofauti, back when we were both in our mid-twenties on the local hockey pitch at Riverside Hockey Club in South Africa.

Durban is (was) my home town; a humid, tropical spot on the east coast of South Africa where you can live in slops (you probably call them flip flops or thongs, but the latter makes me think of an entirely different article of clothing so let’s just call them slops) all year round. We live with local wildlife on our doorstep, even if you're a city dweller you’ll have the vervet monkey’s visiting or the green bush snakes in the trees. I grew up inspired by nature, with some unconventional pets and animal rescues (often hidden from my mother under my bed) so conservation has always been close to my heart. You could argue the sports world also has some pretty wild animals in need of conserving too.

Crista and I had a lot in common; a questionable sense of fashion, inappropriate humour and a complete love for the African outdoors. She joined us in Durban after an epic adventure - driving through Africa from Kenya. A year previous, she had played in the Beijing Olympics for the GB women’s hockey team, and she had broken her wrist badly. As a professional athlete her future was uncertain and the surgeon had warned her to adjust her expectations, even a simple task of writing and holding a pen could be challenging.

And that’s how we met. An Olympian coming to our little hockey club in Durban, “trying out” for our first team completely under the radar, no one knowing who she was and what she was capable of. Boy, did we find out quickly! A species of a rare kind.

After a relatively short few months with us, Crista was called back to the GB hockey squad to start training for the next Olympic cycle in London. She left Durban and our hockey community ever the richer for her presence. And I guess that’s what she does whenever she goes - she leaves it (us) better than we she found it.

Fast forward a decade or so and Tofauti's inaugural event was about to launch - the Conservation Ball in 2018. She is not one to shout about her achievements but the platform that she had created after winning that prized Gold medal was about to be leveraged for African wildlife…Tofauti was about to be born.
But she was a wreck. Nervous that it could be a flop (different kind of flop); most especially that people might not arrive. This first ball was completely self funded by Crista to test her idea, in the hope that this cause would resonate with others.

The venue was the prestigious Hurlingham Club and the weather was just awful. Storm ‘Emma' (how appropriate) hit the United Kingdom and there was record high snowfall. Unbeknown to Crista I was flying from South Africa to London for the event to support her. I had organised a ticket to the Ball through her godfather as his 'date' for the night and my code name was "Victoria”. We were so excited about our plan and so chuffed with ourselves for pulling it off without Crista suspecting a thing.

I arrived at Crista’s apartment; she was nervous, her hair in foils, prepping for the big event and she could hardly even say “hi”! Not even the appearance of the mysterious ‘Victoria’ could cut through the high expectations and tension she had for the coming hours. Very few things make Crista nervous, it's only the very important things - this was definitely one of them. She obviously had little to be concerned about as it was a massive success!

A few years later and I’m proud to say Tofauti has grown into a team, uniting people to collaborate and walk this journey together. I love doing my small part for our team, ever in hope to make a small lasting change on my home continent.

Thank goodness for Zoom, FaceTime and Dropbox because today we live all over the globe! Moving from Africa, to Europe and now on to North America has been quite the journey for me. Three continents and a global pandemic, making travel almost impossible has given me real pause for thought. What was once a global village has been barricaded by new protocol, covid tests, haphazard flight cancellations and a lot of uncertainty.

Africa, as it must’ve done in the past, now feels a million miles away as winter brings in the short, rainy days here in British Columbia, Canada. I've lived 30 years in the tropical heat of Durban, but now I’m exploring the shores of the Pacific Northwest and it's quite a different habitat for a Durbanite! I joked about the end days as the gloom of smoky fog from the wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington State hit us in Vancouver. And now a 'Mothpocalypse' (an invasion of western hemlock looper moths) that are decimating our trees! The evidence for climate change and the need for effective conservation of natural wilderness is overwhelming, no matter where in the world you may be.

One thing I have learn’t from this wonderful ride with Tofauti is that you don’t start with the problem, you start with celebrating the things worth saving.

"Gratitude is the real treasure God wants us to find, because it isn’t the pot of gold but the rainbow that colors our world.” – Richelle E. Goodrich

So while I’m on a completely different continent, many miles away from our Tofauti team, I’m celebrating the different kind of natural beauty I find myself in, this new kind of wilderness and trying to answer the Tofauti call... why can’t you make a difference right where you are?