Animals in the African bush live and die by alarm calls.
So do safari guides.
If you’re a guide and you’re out looking for a leopard, you need to stop frequently and listen. You’re listening for alarm calls. If you hear the snorting of an impala or shouts from a troop of baboons or vervet monkeys, then there is a good chance that these animals, who are on the menu for leopards, have – not surprisingly found it before you. Sometimes the alarm calls can be more subtle – a starling giving a rasping, unhappy call or the chop-chop-chop of a red-billed francolin. Those noises don’t guarantee that they’re unhappy with a leopard, but they are unhappy about something.
If you’re walking in the bush you are tuning in to all these calls, but also listening for what other information the bush is giving you. A tree squirrel has three different alarm calls – some of which are going to be more relevant for you, if you’re able to understand squirrel. One call means “Look up – there is a bird of prey”, another call means “I’ve seen a snake” and another call means “Look down, there’s something dangerous down there. What might be dangerous for a squirrel might not always be dangerous for you and your guests – for example it could be a slender mongoose or an African wild cat.
On the other hand, it could also be a leopard or even a lion.
But it’s not just the things that might eat you that you need to worry about. A breaking of a branch might indicate a breeding herd of elephants in which case you’ll need to check the wind so you can avoid giving your presence away. Or maybe you’re in a patch of thick bush and you hear a small flock of oxpeckers (birds which remove ticks and parasites off the backs of large herbivores) it is worth paying great attention. They could be coming off a kudu or a bushbuck, but perhaps they might be coming off a lone cape buffalo bull (regarded by most guides as the most dangerous animal to encounter in close quarters) or maybe a hippo (which kills more humans than any of Africa’s other big dangerous animals).
To survive out here, and to be able to not just keep your guests safe, but also give them an experience where you get good views of these animals, it requires a high level of experience and familiarity with a very complex and dynamic and hazardous external environment.
However, staying safe doesn’t just require an awareness of the external environment. You are a part of that environment, and so it requires an awareness of what is happening within you. How are you feeling? Are you fresh? Can you pay attention? Are you making decisions now that will allow you to be fresh and make good decisions later?
We also get alarm calls and warning signs in the internal environment.
If you ever catch yourself drifting off and starting to imagine how fun it will be to hang out with your buddies on the weekend and have a few beers at the footy – that is an alarm call. If, while I’m walking out in the bush, I catch myself thinking about the lovely feedback I’m going to get from these people, or whether they’ll be able to refer me any business, or how Dad is doing after his knee operation – that is an alarm call informing me that I’m not paying attention. If I can catch myself, then I can make a decision to do whatever I need to do to put myself in a space where I’m able to pay attention again (probably that means we sit and have a 10 minute break).
So what can you do to train yourself to start paying attention to the fact that you’re not paying attention?
It’s a bit like wanting to improve your serve at tennis or just about anything. You need to decide that you want to do it and then practice.
The practice that has worked for me is a short meditation – even just 3-5 minutes to start off, but building up to 10 or even 20 minutes. The key elements of the practice are:
- This isn’t about having no thoughts at all – it is about learning to watch your mind and be able to pay attention to the moments where you stop paying attention.
- Don’t judge yourself or be critical of yourself if your mind keeps wandering. Just focus on your breath and get back to practice.
- Be as consistent as you can but any practice is better than no practice.