IF Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have chosen to have their baby in Namibia, just how dangerous can Africa be? As we report this week on pages 14-16, their high-profile and frequent visits to the continent are doing plenty to dispel some of the myths surrounding life there.

Last week I was in Zambia, where there wasn’t the slightest interest in the Hollywood couple, but, instead, plenty of admiration for a home-grown celebrity who is doing her bit to change perceptions, too. Rose Jere, 36, last week became the first black Zambian female safari guide, passing the exams that allow her to take tourists on driving safaris. I joined Jere for her first safari as a professional guide, and as we drove into the South Luangwa National Park, bus and truckloads of local people passed us, hooting and cheering her.

By any standards, Jere is an unusual woman — but in a country where women traditionally keep the home rather than go out to work, she is exceptional. She started her career studying mechanics. “I had a dream that I needed to do a man’s job,” she told me. “I felt good when I saw men putting on overalls with dirty oil and grease!” She also learnt to drive, another rare skill by local standards, and landed a job as a housekeeper at Kapani, the safari lodge run by Norman Carr Safaris in the Luangwa valley.

Jere impressed her boss with her enthusiasm for nature and her technical skills, and Norman Carr Safaris backed her as she studied for Zambia’s notoriously difficult guiding exams, which she passed on the third attempt.

She hopes to be a role model to others, but admits to being shy. “I was taught that ladies are very shy,” she says. “When I started driving, people were surprised to see me. Tourists can be surprised because they have never been guided by a lady. But I had a lot of support from guests.”

Nevertheless, life is not easy: her 15-year-old daughter lives in a distant province with her sisters and she visits them only once a year. Jere is supporting her family with her salary, and says she has no regrets about her choice. Last year she was working as a housekeeper. This year, she is guiding tourists in an upmarket safari lodge.

Her first safari as a qualified guide was an unqualified success. From our open-topped Land Rover we saw elephants, several types of antelope and, most thrillingly, two lionesses preparing to hunt, then rushing at the antelope in an unsuccessful attempt to catch dinner.

FOR THE past year Times Travel has been paying to offset the emissions of our writers’ flights by giving the appropriate fee to Climate Care, so we’re delighted to see that The Guardian has finally caught up with us and is now promising to do the same. We will return to the aviation emissions debate in detail next month.

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