It was just a holiday, but it changed my life

Holidays can be good for your health. You lie on a beach and relax, and tensions disappear. But sometimes a holiday can change your life completely, which is what happened two years ago to Victoria Smith.

Victoria Smith, six years ago, was working as a manager at Next, a British chain store. Then she went on holiday to Borneo…

‘It was a working holiday’, said Victoria, ‘where you could study orang-utans in the wild – I have always been interested in apes, so I thought it would be fun.’ The holiday was wonderful, and when Victoria came home she found it very difficult to return to her old life. ‘Suddenly the problems in the store just seemed so trivial. ’ Although everybody told her she was mad, she decided to go back university and study biology. Four years later she became a chimpanzee keeper.

For the last two years Victoria has been working at Monday World, a centre in south-west England which looks after apes which have been ill-treated. Many have been rescued from laboratories and circuses all over the world. She works long hours, and the pay isn’t very good, but she loves it. ‘Apes are like a big family, each with their own personality.’

‘I’m really happy now. Since I started working here I feel that I’ve been doing something important, not just wasting my life.’

Past Tenses