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

Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide | Peter Allison | Life in the Garden of Eden. With mice.

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Whatever You Do, D...

	Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide Peter Allison The Lyons Press, 2007 - 264 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Whatever You Do... "read this book"!

As a seasoned African traveler, author and professional photographer who has worked in Botswana in the same areas and with the some of the same guides that Allison mentions, I heartily recommend this book. It's a very pleasurable read that brought many smiles to my face. It also exposes the funnier side of life in the bush and safari that most tourists never get to see. An easy, fun read, it's a must have for anybody who loves the bush or even the idea of safari. Get a copy today, enjoy it by yourself or share it with a friend!

Life in the Garden of Eden. With mice.

Peter Allison's book is superb. He is a true animal lover and the reverence he feels for Africa is clear in every word he writes. Africa truly comes alive through his eyes. There is great tenderness in his work, both for the animals and the people that he worked with. However, with a humor that is both dry and self-deprecating, Allison continually made me laugh. I even found myself laughing out-loud in several places. My one complaint is that this is a relatively quick read. While there are plenty of stories and lots of information, it was just over too soon. Anyone who loves animals, loves Africa, loves to adventure, or simply loves to read, should find a place on their bookshelf for this marvellous book.

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Totally enjoyable

I picked this up on a whim. His writing seems to be directly form the heart. It was easy to put yourself out on a safari...even if a bit longer than expected. I may even discover a love for birds.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run

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 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.

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Bald-headed men beware! (Oh, just kidding.)

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Peter Allison worked as a safari guide, primarily in Botswana. In Whatever You Do, Don't Run, Allison tells stories about his life in the bush. There are animal stories aplenty--a herd of elephants clustering protectively around its calving matriarch, a giant Python intent on crushing the life out of the author, an infestation of mice so desperately hungry they took to chewing on bald men's heads. But guides have to deal with paying guests as well as wild animals, and Allison does not shy from criticizing the spoiled and stupid among his tour groups.

In the hands of a more witty writer (think J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals), the material at Allison's disposal might have resulted in an unputdownable read. Allison's book isn't, but his stories are cute and amusing, and the author himself is likable and agreeably self-deprecating. Most interestingly, Whatever You Do, Don't Run gives readers a glimpse of an unusual llfestyle that most of us will probably not have given much thought to before: what's it like, day-to-day, to lead tourists around herds of impala and crocodile-infested rivers? If the subject matter is of interest, or if you like to browse the lives of people with jobs far different from yours, Allison's book is worth a quick read.

-- Debra Hamel

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8

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