Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide

This is a super fast read. Only 245 pages long (and faster if you read at the same time as listen to the audio like I did), you'll get through this in no time. Which is good because that will give you time to read it again and again. I know I wanted to! Allison can be hilarious but he can also be extremely poignant. What comes through the strongest, though, is his love for the wildlife in Botswana. Whether its wild cats or beautiful birds, Allison has a deep respect for all creatures he may take a tourist to see. The audio has the narration of Antony Ferguson. Not to be missed!

Peter Allison always loved wildlife. He went on a vacation backpacking in Africa, and never wanted to leave again. When he found out he could make a living as a safari guide he was ecstatic. He worked in various locations for several different safari outfits; this book describes his time in Botswana.

While there are plenty of self-deprecating jokes and Allison has no qualms about describing his clumsiness and mistakes that often get him into troublesome situations (drowning several vehicles when he tries to cross rivers, or finding himself too close -on foot- to an upset mother lion or elephant for example) you can tell he really loves the wildlife, and the book is just as much about appreciating the animals. There's also a lot about show more what goes on behind the scenes in running a safari camp, the ups and downs of the daily grind it becomes, the relationships with his co-workers, the visiting tourists who are often difficult or demanding. And there are some quite serious moments when people fall ill, have accidents, run into dangerous snakes. Or when a kill they are excitedly homing in on to show the tourists some action- lions and hyenas fighting over something- turns out to be the death of an animal they had come to know from long association- so instead it is something quite sad.

I liked this book. It was engaging, funny, heartwarming, interesting by turns and made me want to go look up more by this author.

from the Dogear Diary show less

I have been enthralled with African animals since my first visit to the Natural History Museum in New York City when I was a child. I loved this book! I especially appreciate Allison's honesty and candor re. his inexperience when first starting as a guide. I felt as though I took a safari and never had to leave the comfort of my living room. The descriptive, humorous writing style kept me reading and wishing the book didn't end.

Peter Allison was 19 when he left his suburban home in Australia to follow his dream and backpack around Africa. He soon ran out of money and found himself bar tending in a South African safari resort. He moved up the ranks to a safari guide in Botswana where he stayed for the next seven years running a camp and taking daily jeep rides with tourists from around the world out into the bush.

Allison knew nothing about animals of Africa when he started. Much of the charm of the book is Allison's self-deprecating English humor as he makes mistake after mistake. His amateurism is a parody of the serious African adventurer; yet paradoxically his amateurism gives his account a sense of authority, we are able to see his wayward mistakes as a show more sign of his own expertise. Amateurism also provides Allison with a form of self-protection from the dangers of the bush; like a Mr Magoo stumbling into bad situations, it is his recognition of bad decisions that enable him to escape (unlike a "professional" who might not be as flexible in admitting a mistake).

Whatever You Do, Don't Run is written in the travel literature tradition of the wayward English gentleman bumbling through situations with campy humor, similar to A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. The idea is to de-throne the serious, to present a comic vision of the safari world that promotes harmless entertainment; but this also has the effect of disengagement and detachment - the safari guests from Germany, Japan and elsewhere become props to hang global stereotypes, or moral outrages. It also serves as cover for Allison - behind the facade of wry humor and aestheticism is a sense of moral and cultural superiority; the self parody hides his own role and responsibility.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd show less

This is an account of a novice, then later experienced, safari guide in Africa. Allison has a particular talent for telling a tale that gets inside the head - and soul - of his subject. It's mostly the animals of course, but it is also the tourists and his fellow guides. In these short stories Allison tells the story of modern safari tourism as well as I've ever seen done. There's humour there, but also great affection, and some very reflective thinking about the nature of the business, and human nature in general. Very highly recommended for anyone with an interest in wildlife in Africa, and essential reading for anyone who is considering travelling there.

This is a super fast read. Only 245 pages long (and faster if you read at the same time as listen to the audio like I did), you'll get through this in no time. Which is good because that will give you time to read it again and again. I know I wanted to! Allison can be hilarious but he can also be extremely poignant. What comes through the strongest, though, is his love for the wildlife in Botswana. Whether its wild cats or beautiful birds, Allison has a deep respect for all creatures he may take a tourist to see. The print has some amazing photographs.

"Whatever you do, don't run." This was the solemn counsel of the three guides who worked at the camp. "Food runs," added Alpheus, the tracker, his rough face split by an enormous grin. "And there is nothing here that you can outrun anyway."

Summary: When he was 19, Peter Allison left his native Australia and moved to Africa to become a wildlife safari guide in South Africa and Botswana. Whatever You Do, Don't Run is a collection of some of Allison's stories from his experiences working in a safari camp, stories that involve charging buffalo, a plague of mice, misbehaving royalty, waterlogged Land Rovers, hungry honey badgers, lion pride drama, German tourists, and baby elephants.

Review: This book is not a memoir per se; it's more of a show more collection of stories, the sort that get told when you're sitting around after work with drinks and somebody breaks out with "Hey, remember the time that ______?" I can say this with some authority, since the day after I started reading this book, my coworkers and I were having drinks, and we started telling exactly these same kinds of stories. Ours had a less-dramatic cast of animal characters, admittedly, but the gist was the same. Honestly, I think any biologist, park ranger, nature guide, or zookeeper - anyone that works out of doors, with animals, and/or with tourists - probably has enough equally funny and/or death-defying stories to fill a similar book.

This cuts both ways. On the one hand, Allison's stories are undeniably entertaining, he's got a good sense of comic timing, and his love for his job and the wildlife comes across loud and clear from every page. On the other hand, the fact that it was a loose collection of stories rather than a more ordered memoir meant that it was not really organized in any cogent manner, so that the stories skipped back and forth in time, people were constantly referred to without any introduction or context, and some bits of Allison's life (a crappy childhood in particular) were brought up from time to time without ever being explained. This gave the collection a somewhat unfinished feeling that was reinforced by the occasional roughness of the prose; Allison is clearly a safari guide first and a wordsmith second. But, as long as you're willing to treat this book the way you would a friend that's shooting the shit over drinks, and not as anything more formal, the stories are an entertaining diversion for a few hours. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: It's not a must-read, but for fans of nature documentaries and African wildlife, it's a quick and humorous look into what it's like for the humans that live with such things every day. show less