What you would see in this incredible photo collection of a little girl named Tippi Degré growing up alongside some of Africa’s ‘wildest’ animals is undoubtedly amazing.
Before Tippi was born, her parents were French. Filmmakers and wildlife photographers Alain Degré and Sylvie Robert moved to Windhoek, Namibia with their children while Sylvie was pregnant with Tippi. Namibia was a part of South Africa at the time until it gained independence in 1990, the same year Tippi was born.
Due to her family’s love of adventure, Tippi spent most of her childhood traveling extensively to different parts of Africa including South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana.
In Namibia, what nobody foresaw was an inexplicable friendship between her daughter and some of the most feared and fierce animals like snakes, tigers, lions and cheetahs. She’s also spent time with zebras, elephants — notably Abu, a 28-year-old, five-ton elephant she calls “my brother” — and a leopard nicknamed “J&B.”
It was obvious that Tippi was no ordinary child as she has spent a lot of time playing with African wildlife since childhood. She believed she had the gift of communicating with animals, so she embraced them like her brothers and sisters. According to her, she speaks to the animals with her mind, through her eyes and her heart.
Tippi Degré was not only friends with wild animals, she also became best friends with the local Bushmen of the Kalahari, from whom she learned how to forage berries and roots, shoot bows and arrows and dance carefree.
Tippi had a very different upbringing, from peer pressure, influential preschool friends, and all the usual drama that comes with growing up in the city because her parents decided to choose a different path. These photos were shared by her parents who are both nature photographers and captured these fascinating moments.
Check out the photos below.
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At the age of 10, Tippi returned to Paris with her parents, who enrolled her in a public school but, as might be expected, found it difficult to adjust to normal school life. As a result, her parents pulled her out of school to have her tutored at home and traveled frequently between South Africa and France.
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Tippi, a grown woman, has published books detailing her experiences with the San Bushmen of Namibia and the Himba people and wildlife of the region. One of these books is Tippi: My Book of Africa. In it she shared her thoughts and wisdom on Africa, its people and the animals she has come to know and love. The book, loved by children, opens their minds to understand that it is possible to have amazing lives with animals and supports the idea that children have an innate sense when they are young that animals are in are able to perceive or feel things and communicate with them and should care for them.
In 1997 a documentary about Tippi’s experiences entitled Le Monde Selon Tippi (The World After Tippi) was released.
This extraordinary woman also hosted six animal and environmental television documentaries between 2002 and 2003. Around the world with Tippi – for the Discovery Channel. The documentary by Jeanne Mascolo de Filippis was released in 2004.
She has equally launched projects aimed at raising awareness of the plight of African wildlife as some face extinction.
Named after Tippi Hedren, the actress from the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, Tippi Degré, as opposed to being an actress, seems more suited to working behind the cameras than in front of them.
Probably influenced by her parents’ work,She studied cinema and audiovisual in France and currently lives in Paris where she works as a director of “El Petit FICMA”, the children’s section of the FICMA festival.