I hope you guys are doing well.

Now this video is a recap of 2024.

Many of you guys have been asking me about why we didn't publish that much content in this year and there's a specific reason to it.

Noé, myself and the entire Hakunomi Paka team had to shift our time and skill and manpower a little bit more towards solving actual issues, existing issues, and initiating some projects which will help the Hakunomi Paka ways, instead of filming all these things and then using the time and manpower to edit that stuff and then put it on social media.

You will get all your answers right now in this video, so stay around.

All right, so let's start with the most obvious thing.

Dean Schneider became a father.

I've got a baby girl.

Her name is Naila.

She was born in August and it was the most beautiful but also most challenging thing in my life up until now, I believe.

It started off with her coming four weeks too early.

That resulted in me not being there, basically.

On the same day when she was born, my wife was in Switzerland telling me she's coming now already and I'm like, no way, I'm still in South Africa.

I still got four weeks left and she's like, well, that's nature, that's my buddy who decided she wants to, or that's Naila who decided she wants to come out.

Okay, I flew over to Switzerland on the flight that was connected via video call and she gave birth to her.

I felt miserable.

I couldn't feel worse.

That was a very sad moment for me, not being there, not being able to hold the hand of my wife to support her mentally and physically.

I really felt bad, but all those bad feelings went away once I arrived there in the early morning, could hold my baby, could hold my wife and then it was the most beautiful thing again.

The coming weeks was tough because she was so early there, so we had a lot of medical checkups and a lot of medical issues which we had to sort out.

So the focus was 100% family and supporting my wife for about eight weeks until we then, in the age of eight weeks, traveled to South Africa together with baby Naila, which by the way went very well and arrived here and then that was a dream coming true.

Every single interaction and introduction between baby Naila and the dogs, for example, or baby Naila and the monkeys or Naila and the lions was absolutely mind-blowing and all these were moments I will never forget again.

So in the end of the day I would say this big happening was very positive.

All right, then a little bit of more tough topic, not so positive.

We lost Madiba.

Madiba was one of the cheetah brothers, Kobe and Madiba, and we found him dead in the camp.

The day before we did feed him.

They were happy and healthy, playing around.

We watched them eating their meat.

A day later our chef at that time, she would take a walk around the camp and she spotted him laying there on the ground and she took a video, came back to the house.

She was like, I think something is wrong with Madiba and I looked at the video and I immediately realized that guy is dead.

There's something seriously wrong.

So we rushed over to the camp and he was laying there lifeless on the ground.

There was a little bit of blood coming out of his snout and he was already a little bit bloated up and I immediately knew it must be something crazy because he was in such great condition physically and mentally and they were brothers.

There was no bite marks that they would fight each other or something like that.

We drove to the vet, to our main vet clinic to make an autopsy because I needed to know what the actual issue is and on the way there Noah and I were brainstorming and reminded ourselves of a couple of days ago one of the workers reported about the black mamba which they saw close to the camp when they were cutting the grass.

Shortly after we dropped him off at the vet and he started shaving him down and cutting him open and you know do a whole autopsy and physical checkup.

There was the one information that he was in absolutely great condition which I think is nice to hear for us knowing that he had all the necessary vitamins, he had the best food he lived a healthy beautiful and great life.

Actually he said he has never made an autopsy on an animal which looks that healthy and balanced and on the other side he said he died of an anaphylactic shock according to the signs of the body and most of the time this happens when a black mamba bites you.

It was very hard for us, it was about three weeks ago.

On one side it was a it's not something one of the workers or I myself or anyone else would have done wrong or so on but nonetheless it is a very sad thing because he was part of the family.

I am in an unfortunate position to forward this very sad news to you guys.

All right then another topic which is not good or bad which brought some good fresh positive energy into the team is we had a change in our farm management.

Andy who was for three years our farm manager, he originally comes from Switzerland, he moved to South Africa three years ago on a long-term visa to help us run this place here and he left us in the end of this year all on good terms.

He just wants to find some new challenges so we had to find someone new who can help us run this place especially since Noé and myself are traveling every now and then or even the situation you know with baby Naila and so which asks me to be away for a couple of weeks.

I need someone solid here who understands the whole system and can run this place as it was his.

We had to make sure that everything runs smoothly and the new farm manager can understand the whole system so we really all of us had to work on it and to help Andy to do that whole transition to the new farm manager which by the way has done a great job so far and everything is working smoothly and I hope in the coming year our team will be able to keep a lot of work off our backs so that we can produce much more content again for you guys.

All right then another topic is quite a famous topic in my world it's the monkey dome.

Some of you guys have heard of it.

Two years ago we started with a new home building a new home for the monkeys because they're capuchin monkeys they actually live in the amazonian rainforest so we did build or we're busy building a home as beautiful as big and as wild as possible according to our possibilities for the monkeys but we're getting there.

We started two years ago where we have been messed around a little bit because they gave us completely wrong budgets and then I had to make a fundraiser.

We succeeded within a day or two to get that money so thank you so so much to all of you guys out there.

Without you this monkey dome wouldn't be possible right now and then we started building it legitly properly.

In a couple of weeks they should be able to move so we're getting there we're almost there but that definitely has kept us on our toes as well.

It's just a massive project almost as if you would build a house.

All right and then we're gonna switch to again a little bit of a darker moment and situation here in the Hakunomi Park Oasis.

We found out that people are strategically stealing from the Hakunomi Park house, stealing petrol, stealing tools and we are a very small team.

Literally having the full responsibility and running it is Noe, myself and Eli and we had to sort out the situation meaning you have to interview everyone, you have to get all the information, then you have to fire people.

After you fired people and you sorted out the whole situation you're short in your team so you have to get new people.

Now where do you get new trustworthy people which are willing to come out to the wild and commit to to work on this you know in such an environment but yeah that was definitely a topic people would not know about and would think why does team not create some content.

All right then a more positive but also extremely time-consuming topic is what most people most probably don't know.

We're building a new house, a new house to live in here in the Hakunomi Park Oasis.

Actually right next to the existing house.

The reason being is this existing house is falling apart.

For those who follow me for a while they know the roof issues it's leaking into my room we try to fix it a lot of times it's still not fixed.

Here the roof we have to stabilize it with steel poles otherwise the whole outside area would crash.

We cannot take a bath anymore because the bathtub is about to fall out.

We try to renovate it a lot of times and specialists even came out to check the house and they said it's too dangerous it's falling apart and I believe in Switzerland according to law you wouldn't be even allowed anymore to live in such a house.

So now we are basically living in a construction site.

Also then a very cool thing which was combined with actually a lot of content which has not been published yet is the second line movement.

The second line movement occurred all the lines are now up in the live wild area and we've got actually we implemented our line Tuesday because it did happen already in the past that for two weeks three weeks we didn't spend time with the lines because there are so many other responsibilities and you know just the the day-to-day duties they shifted from doing things with the actual animals and filming to having meetings and to doing contracts and to check up on things.

So we brought in the line Tuesday so every Tuesday there is no meetings there is no responsibilities except of spending time with the lines or with the other animals.

I think the scariest moment in my entire life I'm going to tell you about that one right now and it has nothing to do with a venomous snake.

I've been handling wild black mambas I've been dealing with a lot of crazy stuff out here in the wild and even whether the lions nor the venomous snakes nor anything else has been that scary to me as this one situation.

My wife Ellie went to a city and she went to a mall to do some shopping together with Naila and she sat down in the middle of the mall on a bench to feed her with milk and then they tried to steal my baby out of the arms of my wife in a shopping day in a shopping mall during the day.

Two women one sat down on the left side the other one sat down on the right side and they were like oh the baby's so cute and is it your baby and blah blah and then they started to play around so with the hands and she felt already uncomfortable kind of moving a little bit away because she was feeding her and she felt like they put a lot of pressure on it and then the one just tried to pick it up and she's like what are you doing no leave my baby alone and then she said oh no well why am I not allowed to hold her and then she said no because she I don't let strangers hold her she will cry she does not like to be with strangers and then the older lady said Anna she will not cry with me and just reached out to Naila to the baby and tried to hold her and in that moment Ellie got up and I said if you don't move away now I'm gonna call the police.

I was not there she called me on the phone and she explained me what just happened five minutes later or ten I was there we went straight to the security and we checked all the cameras we tracked them down where did they come from and where did they go they were just not just the two ladies it was a third one another man a male behind my wife with a corona mask you know those masks which you we used to wear a couple of years ago and that guy belonged to those two ladies so it was a pretty clear organized thing and they tried their luck but they failed and obviously we got the police involved and everything but it's not a rare thing that happens in Africa that human trafficking baby trafficking they're selling babies they they're like the market is actually insane and and we are so lucky to still be parents of our baby girl and not have lost her but I couldn't sleep for for days and even today sometimes I look at my baby and I was like a couple of weeks ago if that if they would have succeeded my baby would have been gone you couldn't you cannot find these people anymore in South Africa if something is gone it's gone they can make it disappear without you finding it ever again all right next topic values culture so you know it hasn't been really great financially for us in the past because being that positive figure Dean Schneider happy healthy with all the animals who are happy and healthy who have a lot of space who live as wild as possible I'm not the greatest platform to collect donations because why should you donate to someone who appears to be very happy and whose animals appear to be healthy when on the other side you donate you can donate to a shelter of dogs where they look dirty stinky and hurt and they need help right now otherwise they wouldn't survive fact is I'm still a charity foundation the Dean Schneider foundation and we're dependent on money and on donations as well but it hasn't been working very well for us so out of this reason I decided to bring to life values culture brand apart from Hakuna Mipaka Oasis that should create an income source for us and we realized very soon that the margins we get because everything is supposed to be very sustainable eco-friendly from the packaging to just everything we didn't want you guys to have any moral compromises that ended up being not really profitable so it was just a whole lot of work a whole lot of headache so we had to freeze it for the whole year 2024 we adapted the whole logistics system trying to make things slightly more profitable so at least we don't pay on top of it and that has happened in 2024 also we did do the trips which we promised we did those raffles where you could win a safari trip when you buy a product we've got more trips and crazy events happening next year in combination with values culture so stay tuned about that but we did those trip we've gone to Kenya it has been an absolutely crazy adventure but I'm happy to announce that we will be online early next year again we'll be selling you'll be able to come on trips to maybe visit me here in South Africa and it's going to be absolutely cool and last but not least the most important topic for you guys is content I hope after all these topics which we spoke about now you've got a better understanding for why this year we had to shift our focus a little bit more onto other things instead of content but that brought us to the point to create a new content concept for 2025 and this is our new platform is going to be YouTube don't worry we will still publish content on Instagram but YouTube allows us to create that income source YouTube pays per view and it allows you guys the viewers to even donate through a post even here you can do those super likes and special likes and donate something towards the Hakunomi Park Oasis and myself the animals and everyone all the time which is invested into creating and publishing content will be rewarded financially as well so that we can keep the Hakunomi Park Oasis and the mission running still Instagram content is going to come YouTube is going to be our main platform it's going to be more focused on Dean Schneider and his life I hope you guys enjoyed that I hope you guys will enjoy the content in 2025 and see you then I hope you guys enjoyed this video and if you want to see what's next then make sure to subscribe my YouTube channel right now and if you want to see more content you're so welcome to follow my other socials as well thank you so much for watching and see you guys later