Senior Spotlight: Marwah Raja

Marwah Raja has a baby baboon, and his name is Rafiki. She’ll walk around her neighborhood with him, cradling him on her side, and she’d get all these looks. Some will even stop her and ask, “What’s that on your side?” Like she often does, she’ll respond in a quite nonchalant way, “Oh, it’s my baby.”  

Yes, a baby baboon. Named Rafiki.  

She got Rafiki from a South Carolina zoo in December 2023 when his mom wouldn’t feed him or care for him, and Marwah took him in.  Since then, she has bottle fed him, diapered him, slept with him in her bedroom, and took him to her hair appointments. Rafiki will cling to her side, like Marwah is his mom.  

And she is, really.  

She named Rafiki after the baboon in “The Lion King,” and he became part of the menagerie Marwah and her older brother, Raj, have accumulated since moving from New Jersey to High Point in the summer of 2017. 

So, when Marwah graduated Thursday, June 12 from Southern Guilford High, it surprised no one that she’s going to N.C. State in the fall on scholarship to major in animal science with a concentration in veterinary bioscience. 

She obtained her certified veterinary assistance license through a class at Southern Guilford, and she has been working at least 12 hours a week at a local veterinary clinic after completing an eight-month internship with them. 

Still, so many questions. 

How did her menagerie happen?  

How did it grow to include dozens of exotic animals like a giraffe named Oliver?  

And how did Marwah become Southern Guilford’s version of Dr. Doolittle, the beloved children’s book character who took care of all kinds of animals?  

Start with her grandfather. 
 
Marwah’s ‘Mini Zoo’ 

Marwah was 7 when her grandfather gifted her, Raj, and their little brother, Abdullah, a yellow budgerigar parakeet named Mango. When Mango matured, Marwah and her brothers kept thinking, “Mango needs a friend.” She and her brothers got a moneymaking idea: Mate Mango with another budgerigar parakeet, hatch baby parakeets, sell the baby parakeets to pet stores or bird lovers and use the proceeds to buy more parakeet pairs.  

Their entrepreneurial business grew. Marwah and her brothers played avian matchmaker with more birds and used what they earned to buy a pair of green-cheeked conure parrots and later to a pair of scarlet macaws. Along the way, they complemented their collection with dogs, cats, snakes, reptiles, goldfish and other fish they kept in a big tank in their living room. 

Soon, their three-bedroom house became what Marwah calls a "mini zoo.” Neighbors where they lived in Boonton, New Jersey, would come by to see Mango, a corn snake named Rex, a bearded dragon named Lassie, and an umbrella cockatoo named Pretty. Marwah and her family became a novelty in a small town of nearly 4,300 people 35 miles west of New York City.  

The neighbors all wanted to come by to hold or simply see up-close the animals and birds they had only read about or saw on a screen. When they came, they often asked Marwah and her family the same question: “What are you guys doing?” 

North Carolina Bound  

By the time Marwah turned 10, her parents gave her and her brothers the news: They are moving to High Point. Her parents wanted to start anew in a place they saw as safer and healthier for their Pakistani American children. They wanted their three children to grow up around their extended family in High Point that numbered in the hundreds.  

At first, Marwah and her brothers weren’t happy. They worried about their future without their animals. They knew their parents had always supported their endeavor. But would that continue? Their mom settled their concerns. 

“I promise you guys that you can bring them with you,” she told them. “And we’ll let you expand.” 

Their furniture and the rest of their belongings came down in a big moving truck. The animals came down in a big van. They moved into a neighborhood in a rural part of Guilford County and built new enclosures in their backyard for their chickens, goats, a rooster and two horses.  

Their entrepreneurial business only got bigger. 

The Dream Grows 

Marwah and Raj acquired a license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture they needed to rescue exotic animals raised in captivity and build three animal enclosures in their backyard. Marwah and Raj fed and cared for monkeys, raccoons, large parrots, and Arabian hawks. 

Marwah became the USDA facility manager for Carolina Critters, her brother’s non-profit. Carolina Critters took their hawks, snakes, rabbits, bearded dragons and two ferrets named Bonnie and Clyde to local schools for students to see. They also discovered a temporary home for the exotic animals they rescued. That temporary home became Zoostatic Park, a 186-acre in Troutman, where Oliver the giraffe lives. 

Raj, 20, a graduate of Southern Guilford High, is working online to finish a bachelor’s degree in animal sciences at N.C. A&T. Last fall, he moved 20 hours west to Texas and created an animal sanctuary for hundreds of animals he and his sister have rescued and kept at Zoostastic Park. It took at least two trips in a huge moving truck and Raj settled them all on a former 120-acre ranch in Ector, Texas, a tiny community of less than 800 people near Oklahoma. He calls his new endeavor LoneStar Sanctuary. Its tagline: “Ethical, Educational and Inspirational.” 

“Every mile I drove away from North Carolina felt like a piece of me was staying there, rooted in the people and places that mean the world to me,” Raj wrote on his Facebook page in early November. “But in my heart, I knew it was time to see what life could hold on the other side. This isn’t just a move—it’s a chance to grow, to challenge myself, and to create a life I’ve dreamed about.” 

Marwah is creating a life she’s dreamed about, too.  

‘It Made Me A Better Person’ 

Hailey Peeler teaches agricultural science at Southern Guilford High. She’s also the faculty advisor for the Future Farmers of America, better known by its acronym FFA. Marwah joined her sophomore year. The FFA is no small club at Southern Guilford. It has 200 members, and Marwah became one of its leaders. After applying and interviewing, Marwah became the group’s treasurer. 

“It taught me about leadership, about how to make most of your life by staying kind, respectful, and taking care of all the opportunities around you,” Marwah says. “It made me a better person. I wouldn’t be here without it.” 

Marwah took three animal science classes with Peeler and fed and cared for the chickens and goats in the school’s barn. Those classes led to Marwah taking a veterinary assisting class that helped her land an internship, a certified veterinary assistance license and a part-time job at a vet clinic in Archdale. 

“I’ve been given opportunities here that I wouldn’t find at other schools,” Marwah says. “Mrs. Peeler is helping us make our dreams a reality.” 

Marwah has received the Chancellor’s Leadership Scholarship from N.C. State. The scholarship is awarded to first-year students who have demonstrated leadership, academic achievement and have undertaken, in the university’s words, “unique work and service experience.” 

Marwah definitely has that. 

The Dream Becomes Real 

Marwah wakes up at 6:30 every morning and start making her rounds in the backyard. She feeds and checks in with all the birds and animals. In the afternoon, she cleans up the enclosures and takes care of Rafiki, feeding him, playing with him, and making him feel secure.  

She does that every day of the week, rain or shine. 

“My whole day is taking care of animals,” she says. “It’s a lot.” 

Yet, with all that constant work, Marwah excelled at Southern Guilford High. She earned a spot with the school’s National Honor Society, and her senior year, she was selected to mentor incoming freshmen in a program known as SG Linked. 

N.C. State’s Chancellor Leadership Scholarship will provide Marwah $5,000 a year. Do the math and the scholarship will give Marwah $20,000 over four years toward her education and her dream: Become a veterinarian that keeps exotic animals healthy and safe. 

“I really want to work alongside zoos and sanctuaries that keep up with ethical practices,” she says. “I do not believe in capturing animals from the wild at all. They need to live out their lives in the wild without anything harming them. At zoos and sanctuaries, we need to take care of animals that can’t live on their own, and that is really rewarding." 

“What’s the word? Exhilarating. To take care of exotic animals and make sure they have a good life.” 

Marwah is her parents’ middle child, their only daughter. Her dad works for the U.S. Post Office; her mom works in a department store. At age 7, Marwah started taking care of a parakeet named Mango. She now has taken care of much more exotic animals — and bigger animals — like Oliver the giraffe. She turned 18 in late May, and she takes with her to N.C. State many transformative moments not many her age experience. 

That includes what she learned and absorbed in and around the big barn at Southern Guilford High. Those lessons, Marwah says, has helped her dream edge closer to reality. 

She’s on her way.