She is president of the #PeopleWildlifeEnvironment movement, a Botswana Youth Awards Nominee for Best Youth in Tourism 2021, former Miss Earth Botswana and an environmental activist.
Seneo Perry has been a dominant influencer in the tourism space for the last 12 months, giving free educational information through social media postings and engagements on different tourism amenities in the Okavango Delta.
Her main mission is to tackle the pressing environmental of human-wildlife conflict, especially involving elephants.
She has raised funds through her movement to take Bana Ba Letsatsi from Maun to an elephant orphanage to teach them about the important presence of elephants in our ecosystem and why we still need them. In pursuit of her goals, Perry has collaborated with huge tourism entities such as Desert and Delta Safaris, a subsidiary of Chobe Holdings that runs nine all-inclusive lodges around Botswana. The marketing staff engaged her to travel to some of their camps and lodges in the Okavango and Chobe regions to do influencer marketing. She also did some international marketing filming in the company’s prestigious properties in the wild.
In an exclusive interview with Executive Life, Perry noted that her love for nature was inspired by a trip that she once took to the Okavango with her father. She was fascinated by her father’s knowledge of birds, by name of species, that they saw on the journey. “I started to develop a keen desire to always be around a place that has animals and trees,” she recalled.
“Coming across elephants on the road, and in the reserves was just magical. There’s no other place on earth quite like Botswana. This passion has affected my life positively as now I know my country very well from the travelling and research that I have done. It has also made me dream big about what more I can do to showcase the beauty of this Kalahari jewel at a more international level.”
In her view, of all the tourism sites across the country that she has been, nothing beats the resort town of Kasane and the rest of the Chobe district. “In all honesty, Kasane has stolen my heart,” Perry enthused. “Not only because I received my first pair of binoculars and bird book as a Christmas gift from my Dad there but because there is really something spiritually enriching about the place.
“There is hardly another place in the world like this small town on the edge of Africa’s nexus of four countries with its abundance and diversity of wildlife, improbable serenity and resorts. My favourite habitat has to be the award-winning Chobe Game Lodge, the Desert and Delta Safaris property inside Chobe National Park. In addition to other factors, this is because of its location that hugs the Chobe River.
“Next is the Okavango Delta because of its life-giving waters and sheer magnificence. How it does not flow out to sea is a wonderment all its own, little wonder it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Makgadikgadi Salt Pans are breathtaking. The large, picturesque and flat landscape of white salty sand is home to flamingos in their flamboyance, dazzles of zebras and wildebeest in their improbability.”
The tourism enthusiast is currently in New Zealand where she vows to make more progress in her ‘wild’ ambitions. Perry considers the island country in the Pacific Ocean as an environmentally attuned place that is also doing exceptionally well in filming, which is another of her commanding interests. “The opportunity to travel around the world is a key part of my dreams,” she told Executive Life. “I got this opportunity (to come to New Zealand) through my father. I have a big dream for my country and I am ready to turn that dream into reality. Once I am internationally, I will come back home.”
Asked about how Miss Earth title that she once had, she responded: “The title has given me so much confidence in everything I do. I used it to get the right partnerships through writing proposals and attending online conferences. I also received the right publications and all the hard work I did earned me a good name, which is far more precious than rubies.”
This zesty young woman treasures the experience that comes with her job. “I get to learn much more about myself as I walk this earth,” she said. “I learn so much about people, animals, trees, plants, flowers, birds and so on. It takes risk and great faith in oneself. You only get one chance to live on Planet Earth and to explore every single talent and attribute you have. I live each day as if it were my last; that way you appreciate the little things that you might otherwise take for granted.”
