Koikai is a simple, straight forward kind of a guy. He gets excited about every chance of advancing lion conservation and is totally committed to the Lion Guardians’ call of duty. Despite being one of the few Guardians that do not have a lion name (a â??lion name’ is given to anyone who kills a lion), he was previously involved in many lion hunts.

Koikai is a dedicated Lion Guardian, and his favourite work is lion monitoring. When others might be reluctant to go out into the bush to monitor lions, Koikai will be demanding telemetry equipment to go tracking!

He spends long hours in the bush, living in poorly built temporary homes that are right in the middle of lion territory in an attempt to mediate between beast and man, passing on any information he collects to us at camp.

Recently he was injured when out tracking lions when he had to run away from an elephant.  His favourite lion was Sangale and he is still very angry about his death.

Koikai had three years of very basic schooling, giving him â??mastery’ over English! Whenever he meets an English speaker, Koikai will immediately start to bombard them with the few words he knows in English, and he tries to speak and learn as much as he can. When everyone else is roaring with laughter at his attempts at English conversation, Koikai simply carries on unfazed. He does not even seem to notice!

Koikai also loves getting to grips with new equipment that he comes across. When he sees a camera, a video camera or any kind of recording equipment he loves finding out how it works, and has a go at filming and taking photos himself.

Koikai is married to one wife and has two children.

Listen below to hear Koikai talking about himself:

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Here Koikai talks about how he feels about being a Lion Guardian:

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