AS A change of career goes, it certainly takes some beating.

Police officers Anna and Steve Tolan decided to swap patrolling the Oxford beat for life running a nature reserve in Africa.

Now the couple, who lived in Kennington before emigrating in 1998, are celebrating 10 years of their Chipembele Wildlife Education Centre in Zambia.

To mark the occasion, Mrs Tolan, 52, will be guest speaker at a fundraising dinner on Friday, April 15, at The Oxford Centre in Banbury Road.

She said: “It’s been a wonderful 10 years.

“After years of safari trips to wonderful parts of the African continent we fell in love with Zambia’s wildlife and people and moved to live in a beautiful wilderness area on the banks of the Luangwa River.

“We wanted to conserve the diverse and unique wildlife of this land by teaching local children the value of their wildlife.

“In the 1970s about 10,000 rhinos lived in the Luangwa Valley, but by the end of the 1980s they were all poached out and became locally extinct.

“It has been an amazing experience. We even have a ‘pet’ warthog called Alice.”

The pair joined Thames Valley Police in the early 1980s when they moved to Kennington after getting married.

Mr Tolan, 59, who grew up in Appleton, was a city patrol sergeant and Mrs Tolan worked in CID, later taking on a role as force antiques officer.

They called the reserve Chipembele because it means rhino in the local Chinyanja dialect.

Mrs Tolan said: “The children we teach here could be the decision makers of this area in the future – the one’s who will sit on committees and make decisions about the future of this area.

“If they have had this education about the value of wildlife, about the value of conserving wildlife, then hopefully, they are going to make informed and educated decisions that will take this area in the right direction and will protect it for a long time into the future.”

The land was gifted to the couple by Chief Kakumbi.

After three years of hard work, using money from the sale of their house, they completed the centre on May 12, 2001.

Since then thousands of children taken part in its projects, including environmental awareness and stewardship, computer classes, animal rehabilitation, anti-poaching and environmental protection.

Over the years Chipembele has rescued and reared a wide variety of orphaned or injured animals including elephants, bushbucks, pukus, a buffalo, a serval, a bushbaby and a civet.

  • For tickets for the dinner, visit tiny.cc/Chipembele-UK-Dinner or call 07793 121130.