The Ultimate Safari is the story of a family from Mozambique that sets off on a long journey by foot in search of refuge from war. The narrator is a young girl who, like the other characters in the story, remains nameless. The girl has an older brother and a baby brother. The story begins on the night that their mother ventures out of the house in search of cooking oil. She never returns home.

The children's father disappeared some time ago. He is a solider fighting the war against "bandits" who have destroyed the country. The narrator worries that her mother might have come across some of the bandits. When the bandits cross the paths of civilians, they always kill the civilians. The young girl explains that the first two times the bandits came to their village, they stole everything. The third time they...