This utterly authentic and exciting memoir is presented without embellishment. Between 1971 and 1974, English born Julian Hamer traveled for three years in West Africa, catching and exporting reptiles and amphibians back to Europe. This involved living in the bush sometimes far from civilization and for months at a time. During the course of these extraordinary adventures, he and his colleague, Karl Bishop, an Austrian, experienced Africa at a time when many new countries had only recently come into being after a long colonial history. The cultures of the many peoples as well as the fauna are beautifully and intimately described through a direct experience of life in the bush lived as the rural Africans themselves experienced it.