Hanging with Hippos

I woke early this morning to the melodious orchestra of the birds chirping, calling, and cooing over the canopy. The sounds were a welcomed announcement of morning after a night that had Lara and I clinging to each other in fear.

While enjoying dinner and beers at the camp, we watched in anticipation as the black clouds rolled around the bend in the Nile, the wind whipped through the trees, and the lightening lit up the darkening sky in fantastic bolts of pinks and purples. The roar of thunder rumbled and roared in the distance growing ever louder as the storm moved slowly along the course of the river, snaking its way thorugh the thick green canopy and the horizon-hugging Blue Mountains. Wart hogs roamed freely throughout the camp looking for any morsel of food left by the constant turnover of campers. Out of the darken bushes just in front of us appeared what I though was another of the many warthogs that had been grazing past us all evening. That is one huge wart hog, I casually relay to the others sitting around the table. "Um, no, I think that's a hippo!" announced Kate. The hippo mozied on by us, not payin gus the slightest bit of attention even as hordes of people jumped out of their seats to photgraph the waltzing beast. I was captivated by the nonchalance nature of the animal best known for its deadly jaws and stampeding feet. Others didin't seem concerned of the hippo's wild nature as they followed it through the campsite and cornered it in a thicket of bushes. I sat waiting, just waiting to hear shrill screams of the pursuing kids, an overpowering roar of a threatened hippo casting a warning. Luckily that never happened. Eventually the commotion settled, people finished their dinners, and returned to their bandas to get ready for bed. Lara and I followed suit, but stopped just short of our tent when the hippo appeared again, grazing on the grass around our sleeping quarters. We looked at each other, eyes wide and filled with uncertainty and fear, we grasped for each others arms, something familiar and comforting before bursting out in nervous laughter. Raymond, one of the staff memebers, explained to us that our tent had been set up in the middle of a hippo trail, and that it was quite normal for hippos to graze around the tents at night. "Don't worry," he went on, "if you hear them at night, just don't make any noise. Don't scream, don't laugh, just play dead. They won't trample you if they think you are dead." Again, Lara and I looked at each other and nervous laughter spilled from our bodies. Of course, no problem, we rebutted, hakuna matata! Needless to say, Lara and I slept tucked tightly inside our individual sleep sheets, hugging each other on a small piece of foam pushed as far from the sides of the tent as possible...but no hippos were heard during the night, thank goodness!