Hungry Hungry Hippos

Even though I’ve been charged by a rhino and an elephant, more than any other animal, I have a healthy fear of the adult hippo. I have an even healthier fear of the hippo calf since it means there’s an over-protective mother nearby.

I will defend myself by noting that I am not the only one who harbours such fears. When a group of Malians visiting a Member of Congress in the upper Midwest was taken on a boat ride, the visitors all shook with fear until the Congressman insisted that hippos cannot survive a winter in a frozen river.

In Congo, I know of an American missionary doctor who was forced to leave his work site after a female doctor was killed by a hippo, leading the villagers to believe the doctor’s shape-shifting powers had allowed him to dispose of a rival.

But despite my most rational of fears, I spent a few hippo-happy days last week. It started with a junket to the edge of Liwonde National Park to stay at the Hippo View Lodge for a meeting. The hippo theme was vaguely reminiscent of that cute dancing purple hippo, almost inducing amnesia that hippos are reputed to kill more people in Africa each year than any other animal despite their vegetarianism. The conference facility even had a hippo-shaped sink.

There were plenty of live hippos around as well, which could be easily seen on our boat ride up the Shire River. While my colleagues oohed and aahed over the burbling snouts rising above the water’s surfaced, guffawing and diving, I watched the sneaky bubbles headed straight for our boat. Eventually large dark eyes popped up not particularly far from the boat to give a good solid stare at the intruders.

You may be rolling your eyes by this point, wondering why I’m making such a fuss. After all, we were in a proper boat.

On Saturday, that was not the case. I had taken my trusty kayak to the Lilongwe Sailing Club’s spot at the dam to enjoy a bit of solitary paddle time. Just as I was getting ready to put in, the caretaker scanned the water with his binocs to check for the dam hippo. While I have never seen the dam hippo, she is well-known members of the LSC.

“Stay away from that area.” The caretaker gestured generously to the other shore of the dam. “The hippo is there with her baby.”

Baby?!

Barring immaculate hippo conception, the presence of a baby can only lead me back to my college biology roots to presume that there might just be more than one dam hippo. So if the posts here suddenly stop and my mangled kayak floats ashore, you know who the culprit is.