Charlotte Makhlouf

Fun facts:
I was on a safari where the ranger and my sister and I literally walked into lions. We were looking for elephants, which had been sighted in the area and found instead a young lioness with her three cubs and a young male lion with her. The ranger told my sister and I to stand absolutely still, then he got his gun ready. I should have been terrified but it was amazing! We were literally about two metres away from her and all I could think of at the time was how cute the cubs were rather than whether I would be savaged to death and eaten! Taken by surprise by our appearance, she sloped off with the cubs and we returned to the jeep exhilarated but as white as sheets! We never did see the elephants.

I love animals so having the chance to mush a team of husky dogs in Finland was a huge learning curve . . . challenging but fun! I’ve also ridden camels in Egypt and elephants in India.

Watching the Northern Lights whilst driving a skidoo over a frozen lake was probably one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. I did worry that the lake would crack and I’d fall into the freezing water but was reassured that it was frozen at least 3 metres deep!

One of my most peaceful experiences was reading a book in a garden with a tame cheetah beside my chair. Every so often I would tickle its head just to reassure myself it was still there and I wasn’t dreaming.

I love Drama and the theatre, especially musicals. Once, I played the role of Shelby in Steel Magnolias for an amateur dramatic society. In Scene One, we had to practise getting used to Shelby’s Dad firing his gun (off stage) at the pigeons in his garden. To do this, our stage manager stood in the wings firing a starting pistol filled with blanks, into the air. During rehearsals, everyone jumped out of their skins when the pistol went off. By the time first night came around, we were so used to the gun shots, none of us reacted at all to the noise, so it was hard not to laugh on stage when the audience jumped out of their skins whenever the gun fired!

More about Charlotte:

Charlotte has 15 years of experience in teaching.

One of the children in Charlotte’s class from 2020 nominated ‘Mrs Makhlouf’ as Teacher of the Week for the The Week Junior magazine. ‘Mrs Makhlouf’ was very pleased to be in the magazine in January 2021.