The magical hippo pool (credit: Addison Fischer).
This is the story of Yahaya Selemani, who lives in a small isolated village in southern Tanzania, near Lindi on the coast. For nearly a hundred years, since the Germans left what was then German East Africa after World War I, Yahaya and his family, with the support of the villagers, have acted as guardians to a group of hippopotamus and the sacred place where they live, a wetlands area surrounded by tall rain forest trees. This utterly pristine area, complete with elephants, buffalo, lions, sables, roan antelope, and many more animals, is part of a much larger ecosystem comprising miles and miles—about thirty-seven thousand acres—of dry Miombo woodlands. I spent three days there in August 2008, driving through the woodlands and looking out over a wide river valley and hills in the distance. None of this is part of any reserve or national park, and yet it is virtually unspoiled.
Tanzania’s President Kikweti promised to develop southern Tanzania during his years in office, and Yahaya has worried that this land he loves may be destroyed by charcoal burners or taken over by wealthy hunting safari companies. Fortunately, though, both the local government and most of the inhabitants of the few villages that are scattered in the area are anxious to preserve their environment, while opening it up to controlled ecotourism. And this is where my son, Hugo van Lawick—still known as Grub—comes into the picture. With the full support of the Tanzanian government and of the villagers, he and his two partners—James Lubella, the highly respected Member of Parliament for Kahama region and onetime member of the board of Tanzania National Parks, and Alfred Moser, who ran a very successful safari camp in the Selous Game Reserve—have established the Jane Goodall’s Tanzania safari company. The operation will have minimum impact on the environment, and it will employ only people from the surrounding villages. Every effort will be made to secure funding for schools, dispensaries, and other benefits for the local communities. Somehow we must help Yahaya to preserve the hippos in their sacred pool.
I shall always remember the first time I went there, with Grub. It is quiet, peaceful, as we walk under the tall rain forest trees with their gnarled trunks and trailing vines. We sit on the bank where the clear waters from a hidden spring have widened into a large pool. We do not sit too close to the edge of the water—there are some very large crocodiles in the pool! The light, filtering down through the canopy overhead, is a soft green, but the trees opposite catch the late-afternoon sunlight, and the green of their leaves is bright emerald. All this greenness is reflected in the surface of the pool. A gentle breeze ripples the water and sways the branches overhead so that their reflections undulate deep down in the mysterious upside-down world into which I am gazing.
In the center of this forest pool are the hippos, twenty-one of them in all. A baby, about five months old, is riding on his mother’s back, resting as she floats in the water. Every so often one of the hippos sinks quietly out of sight for a few minutes, then emerges with loud snorts and a spray of water from the nostrils. Quite suddenly the peaceful scene erupts with loud splashing and the sound of breath noisily exhaled from twenty-one pairs of nostrils. The hippos move and re-form, clustering close together, staring at the man who has approached quietly and begun to speak. It is Yahaya and he is speaking, quite loudly, in Kiswahili. He is talking to the hippos—and they listen. He tells them that he will always respect, honor, and try to protect them. He asks that they, in turn, will protect his people from the crocodiles when they are fishing. And he hopes they will feed well and safely that night. The hippos are quite silent as they listen, and they do not submerge—not one of them, not once. And then, after a few minutes, he stops talking. There is an immediate chorus of resonant grunts, and the water swirls, and the hippos move again and get on with what they were doing before. Floating and sinking, waggling their ears, frenziedly waggling their tails as they spread their dung, fertilizing the water of the pool.
The colors in the water dim as the sun sinks lower. White flowers that have dropped from the trees above float like lotus blossoms on the surface of the water among red and yellow fallen leaves that scud across the pool as a soft wind blows. Loud calling birds fly low overhead to roost. There are open-bill storks and ibis. A goliath kingfisher alights on a branch over the water. A pair of smaller black-and-white kingfishers fly past. Opposite, yellow baboons are moving into the trees where they will sleep. The hippos carry on with their watery lives, hippo fashion.
Yahaya and Jane watching the hippos (credit: Addison Fischer). World rights cleared and release enclosed.
Soon Yahaya tells us it is time to go. The young hippo needs much time to feed at night, he says, and the adults will not leave the pool until we are gone. As we follow him, we disturb a very large crocodile, who slides silently into the water. We can see just his eyes and nostrils as he swims ahead of his V-shaped wake. We cross an open sandy area, then follow a narrow trail through the trees to our small camp.
Later we gather around the campfire. Grub with James and Alfred. Addison Fischer, a JGI board member with a passion for saving ecosystems. Chantal and Becky, who are helping Grub and Alfred with the company. And my grandchildren, Merlin and Angel, their half brother Kika, and James’s daughter, Jazzi. We eat well and then, with a full moon above us, Yahaya tells us his story. He inherited his role of hippo guardian from his father, who had inherited it from his father—and so on, right back through time to the days of First Hippo. First Hippo was one of Yahaya’s ancestors who so loved the water that he could not bear to leave it. Every time his family went to visit him, a part of him had changed—his nose, his eyes, his ears. Finally, when they went, they saw only First Hippo. And they promised to protect the hippopotamus tribe and honor them forever. Thus has Yahaya’s role been handed down through the centuries. His wife shares the duties with her husband, but when she goes to visit the hippos in their pool, she sings to them. Grub tells me he has heard her singing. Once a year, Yahaya says, the villagers gather on the open sandy clearing that we had crossed earlier, and they feast and dance and celebrate their relationship with the hippos.
Before we left the next day, I went one more time to the hippo pool and sat there quietly, alone, that I might never forget.
