In Conversation with Dries Lloyd from Rhino Ridge

‘Rhino Ridge is one of four lodges in the Isibindi Africa Lodges group, and all of them are set up the same way,’ he says. ‘They’re very remote, they’re all located within a national park and they all foster a relationship with the local community.’ Local initiatives through the company’s Isibindi Foundation encapsulate the company’s 6 core values: Community, Integrity, Courage, Responsibility, Fun, and Love. It’s what drives Dries, too, who lights up when he talks us through the initiatives, the community and the company’s values.

What he means is that everyone who works at Rhino Ridge has a sense of autonomy, personal responsibility and a healthy dose of accountability. Dries is a delegator, allowing his team to make their own decisions – and mistakes. That’s not a problem, though, as long as the team learn from them and grow. ‘Upliftment’, Dries says in his best Kamala Harris impersonation, ‘is what we’re all about.’

The make-up of the team bears that out – almost completely. 98% of people who work at Rhino Ridge are local villagers , and 95% of them joined the lodge as a first job, often without the necessary skills to do their jobs. With a wry smile, Dries tells us that ‘the guides couldn’t drive, the cooks couldn’t boil an egg’ – but, at an Isibindi lodge, that’s not a problem. The company has trained everyone up, instilling a remarkable sense of self-sustainability and a set of skills that can be used far beyond the day job. The result? A family of people who live and work in this remarkable place, and who barely ever leave. ‘We enjoy a very low staff turnover’, Dries says, ‘and there’s an energy about the place that is hard to describe. We’re all so supportive and our people are at the core of everything we do’.

This, I think, is where the Love pillar of Isibindi’s values comes in. Because how are you supposed to attract staff, keep them, make them happy and motivated, miles from others, without a little love? ‘You can feel it here, and you can see it in the feedback we receive. Our team’s energy is infectious.’ This family dynamic also allows the boss, Dries, to bend the rules when he needs to. ‘I realise that people spend a lot of time away from home and families, so I don’t have rules. If someone is sick, if someone needs time off, if there’s a family problem, we work it out. We send food parcels, look after them, we bend over backwards so that our staff are looked after.’

Dries, as you can probably tell, sounds like a great boss. He’s a big advocate of staff awards, too, to keep motivation up, as well as Rhino Ridge vs Community football. They’d had a match the day before we spoke and, looking a touch forlorn, Dries admitted that ‘we need to work on goalies.’ Unsurprising, given the lack of Chelsea supporters in this part of the world, and the proliferation of Man United and Liverpool fans.

Again, as with everything at Rhino Ridge, we’re back with the community. Isibindi are walking the walk here, very thoroughly indeed. ‘There’s a spring and bore hole for the village that was deliberately drilled to supply the community, as well as the lodge,’ Dries says, ‘and then we have the Isibindi Foundation.’ This is a separate arm of the company, which operates projects around their sites. At Rhino Ridge, they support 5 pre-schools in the local area, maintaining facilities and training teachers. They also support a food scheme for disabled children, run free WIFI and laptop access, and provide an enormous amount of work to locals, who help with the eradication of alien species in the park.

So involved have I become in finding out everything there is to know about how this lovely lodge runs, I almost forget to ask about what visitors to it can expect on their trips. The answer is, predictably, rather a lot. ‘We have all of the big 5 here at Rhino Ridge, and guests will see them behaving entirely naturally,’

The perfect punters for Dries and the team are those who spend an entire trip within the Isibindi ecosystem, travelling the country from lodge to lodge. And why wouldn’t you? Because, just within that ecosystem, you can see whales and turtles at Thonga Beach Lodge, trek through mile upon mile of unexplored jungle at whilst catch a glimpse of a way of life that hasn’t changed in three centuries at Kosi Forest Lodge, before soaking in the Victoria Falls at Tsowa Safari Island Lodge. And that’s all before a trip into the bush at Rhino Ridge.