Day 18

We got up early, but did not have to break up camp(!) as we were staying at that campsite another night. We were poled to another island for a game walk. As we sat in the mokoros not being able to see past the reeds in front of us, we heard a hippo. It sounded like it was only a few meters away and it startled me visibly, which amused Sophie, our polar. Sophie was about as wide as the pole she used to propel our mokoro with grace and ease and she would always answer my questions in a very calming demeanor. “Was that a hippo?”, “Yeeees”, “is it close to us?”, “Yeeees”, “is it angry?”, “Noooo”. “Are you making fun of me?“, [inaudible chuckle].
As the three active bird watchers in our group, were part of the subgroup that Willem and I were taking the game walk with, we got to see many birds. And although I will never reach that same level of admiration as those three, I do have to admit that we have seen some pretty amazing birds during this trip, that impressed me either by their size, beautiful colors, or complete originality of their appearance, so I did learn to appreciate birds more.
After lunch we had another siesta and since I knew what was coming, we followed the lead of other group members to McGiver a sunroof from the extra rain roof of our tent, which was less effective than I had hoped in terms of reducing the need to move around to stay out of the sun (which kept moving in illogical directions). I also figured that I would take the mat out of our tent to lay down, instead of sitting on those uncomfortable chairs all afternoon, but if felt like it was even warmer that close to the ground. Half the time I would open my eyes, ready to move out of the sun, only to find out that the heat on my skin was not coming from direct sunlight and that moving around would not make any sense.
We were told the day before, that the polars would be willing to teach us how to navigate the mokoros. When a few of our group members got up to do this, I thought they were crazy, but at some point I decided to join them despite the heat, as this is something I would have liked to do under normal circumstances. Although it was way too hot for that much activity and although I sucked at every aspect except making right turns, it was good fun anyway and at least I did not fall over like one of the others. I wanted to join a race between our group members, but I did not manage to reach them as I got lost in another right turn.
After this we got the opportunity to go for a swim in the delta and I jumped on that possibility without questioning any safety issues. As I had assumed that we would not be able to swim in hippo and crocodile Walhalla, my bathing suit was not part of the attire I had taken in my small backpack, so I figured I would get into the water wearing my clothes, as the stuff would dry relatively quickly again and could in fact do with some washing as well. Once we arrived at the ‘pool area’ of the delta, I was surprised by our German group member. He was in his early sixties and we had never even seen him show any skin, as he would always walk around with his camera in full (and long) khaki, but here he all of a sudden stripped to his underwear and walked into the water. For me the dive offered a refreshing break from the heat of the day.
Just before temperatures started to drop again, we were taken on a “game cruise” in the mokoros. We saw elephants in the water and could hear their feet wade through the water and reeds. Being in those small boats with the elephants only being a few dozen meters away was absolutely amazing. Also here, our German group member surprised us, when we gazed at the elephants and all of a sudden heard pssssst when he opened his can of beer and calmly drank it while watching the scene.
Then we also went to see the hippos that we heard earlier that day, I noticed that when I asked Sophie whether they were close that morning, they were not as close as I anticipated at that time, but this evening we did get about that close. All of a sudden, one of them looked at us and completely erected himself out of the water. It looked intimidating to me, but it did not elicit a response from the polars, so I figured it would be okay. The next morning however, one of the guides explained when we saw buffalo in the distance, that they are very dangerous as they charge without warning and then he mention that although hippos are more deadly than the buffalos, at least they warn before they charge. And then he described what we had seen this evening. When I pointed out that that is what we had seen the day before and asked why we were not acting on that warning, he smiled, shook his head and walked in the other direction.
When we made it back to the camp (Bernard) our cook, was still working on the preparations for our dinner. To me it was somewhat of a surreal sighting when he started to calmly deep-fry chicken and potatoes in the middle of the jungle about three hours earlier, but after changing into my pajamas so that my clothes could dry further, I did thoroughly enjoy the chicken and fries dinner.
After dinner the polars mention that they wanted to provide entertainment for us on our last night together. They sang songs for us and we did the same for them, as three of the Belgian girls were always very actively engaging in activities of a vocal nature, we did have a few songs ready for them. Many of the songs of the polars were focusing on us all being friends or brothers. The less-then-professional performance of the polars was followed by some games. One of the people was teaching us the words for head, chest and buttocks in whatever language he spoke and then he would name the word, touch one of those three body parts, but then the white people joining the game would have to touch the part that was indicated by the words, not by the gesture. Of course I turned the game around for our African friends to do the same. A few group members had gone to sleep by that time already and the next morning one of them was asking what was going on when I started exclaiming “hoofd-tieten-kont”.
Before going to sleep, we organized a sanitary expedition to the whole that was dug for our ‘bushi bushi’ as it was called by the locals. One person would do their business, while the others would wait at the other side of the bush. I was one of the first and while doing what I was doing, I heard something rustle around, so I decided to start singing a song, so that whatever it was would not walk (or slither) into me by surprise. When Willem came back he mention to the group that I thought he heard something in the undergrowth and when we were about to head back together to see if something was there, there was this loud sound of bushes and branches cracking, so we all ran back to the camp. As I had one of the best flashlights, I donated it to one of the polars that would go to have a look at what it was. A few of the others joined him, but I figured I would sit that one out in our tent. Turns out a big elephant was walking right past our camp and we were peeing right in front of it.