Aske

When we arrived in Jimma, almost three months ago, we had read in our Lonely Planet about a “Hippo Pool” somewhere near the town. Luckily “the other Danes” had done the same - so we decided to hook up and rent a minibus together to get there. We went there this Saturday afternoon, but had some slight difficulties finding it. Luckily Mads (a Dane) had brought a GPS with the location of the hippo pool marked on it, so after some driving in a forest we managed to find it.

Just a few kilometres out of town it is remarkably rural. Five kilometres out of Jimma there is a hydropower dam, creating a big area of swamps, shallow lakes and small rivers behind it. This was were the hippopotamus were to be found. None of us (or the driver or our accompanying Ethiopian friends) had been there before, but as the dirt track ended on the wrong side of the dam we were met by some local boys who knew the way to the hippos. We walked for some time and saw a big lake. The local boys pointed across a plain, but we insisted to go down a hill to get to the lake. And in the end, what do the locals really know when we are the ones with the GPS?
It obviously turned out that they knew a lot more about the location of the hippos.

Down by the lake there were no hippos so we walked for some hundred metres along a river and insisted to cross a field to get to another lake (though the local boy consistently pointed further down the river). By that lake there were no hippos either, however there were lots of interesting birds. We still lacked some excitement. Half of the group was already left behind as their all had a sincere fear of hippos. Maria, Mads, Mette, our driver, a little boy and I heroically kept going. Nothing should stop us, not even a couple of cute hippos.

My perception of hippos got completely undermined by the other Danes in the bus on our way to the lake. They all agreed that hippos are aggressive and dangerous animals. I thought they were big and too slow to do any harm, but was told that after mosquitoes, the hippo is the animal killing most people in Africa. Well. I packed away my swimming gear and agreed to keep a safety distance.

Back to the story. We heard something that sounded like a shot from an airgun and soon after the boy who had showed us the way, pointed at the river as a massive hippo put up the nose to breathe. Wow, we had really found them. However the hippos were quite shy (just as I had predicted) and did not seem aggressive to me at all. The muddy river they were paddling around three-four metre below us, so we all agreed that the big animals could not jump up the vertical dirt walls. Nevertheless the adrenalin started pumping as the biggest of the hippos swam towards us while looking with its evil eyes.

We think we saw half a dozen of hippos, but as we only saw the tip of their noses it is difficult to say. We were told that hippos crawl up on land at night, but during the day they just seemed to be relaxing in the shade of a tree leaning out above the river.

Friday night we had invited the Danish couple Sara and Gregers and their two year old son Vilas for dinner. Unfortunately we had to admit that our kitchen facilities were not sufficient for making what was on Friday night’s menu: Lasagne and apple pie.

Did I write the story about what my dad sent us? Anyways her it comes again. My parents were about to send us a package and I asked my father to send us some powder food as well because of our lack of creativity in the kitchen, and especially because of our lack equipment (oven etc.). My father was very kind to rush down to a supermarket the following day and immediately send of the package. What we got was Indian Rice Dish (use only 500 gr. minced meat), a lasagnette (use only 500 gr. meat plus an oven) and a Sausage Dish (use only 500 gr. sausage (impossible to find in Ethiopia) plus oven). Great. As we don’t even have meat it was certainly not easy to use all our lovely dishes my dad had sent.

Gregers and Sara had heard about the story (the rumours spread quickly among the Danes in Jimma), and said that we were welcome to come to their place to make the food. The point of the story is that we invited them for dinner –in their house.

It was great to have so many things in a kitchen again so Maria and I really enjoyed cooking. We made a real salad with feta cheese and sun dried tomatoes, the lasagne from Denmark as the main course and a nice apple cake with cinnamon and cardamom – umm, it turned out really good. We brought wine and even did the dishes, so both parties were happy (at least we were). Such a win-win situation =P

Tomorrow (Friday) we have school again. The last week we have not done any work (a part from invigilating for two hours) so we have done lots of practical things (and watched all the movies we have got from the others).

Now we will go and find some late lunch somewhere in town, as well as posting this on the internet. I hope it will be manageable today. Last week it took me 67 minutes to send the text and the seven pictures by e-mail for Maria’s mother to upload them. Today we have eight pictures, so let us see how long it takes.

Have a nice week everybody – and merry mini Christmas!

Aske