Childhood freedoms at heart of a wild life under African skies

Conservationist Saba Douglas-Hamilton grew up close to crocodiles. Her family now help to look after elephants in Kenya and star in a new BBC series, This Wild Life

Most British parents worry about their children crossing the road safely. Saba Douglas-Hamilton worries about snakes and scorpions.The 45-year-old wildlife filmmaker lives with her husband, Frank Pope, 42, and their daughters Selkie, six, and four-year-old twins, Luna and Mayian, in Kenya's Samburu national reserve. It has no paved roads, is sparsely populated by nomadic herders, the long grasses teem with snakes, and crocodiles wait in the shallow river. For the family, this wild patch of Africa is paradise. The upcoming 10-part BBC series This Wild Life follows their daily dramas as they raise their young children while running an eco-lodge and conservation charity.

Saba is no stranger to this kind of life. Her own childhood, living in the wild, war-torn corners of Africa, was a crash course in survival. She and her younger sister, Dudu, spent days in the back of a Jeep tracking elephants with their Scottish father, zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, and Italian mother, Oria. They washed in crocodile-infested rivers while their dad kept watch, and slept under the stars with nothing but a mosquito net. They had family holidays in Lamu on the Kenyan coast, where they fished for Nile perch and rode horses bareback.