Hippopotamus!

One evening, just before night, several people in my compound started shouting, “A hippo is coming! A hippo is coming!” I didn’t know what to think, so I thought ridiculous things like that a hippo was walking our way from the river. But the road to the river was empty so then I thought maybe someone had killed a hippo and now people were walking our way bearing plates of hippo meat.

But a hippopotamus, dead or alive, never entered our compound; just one of my namesakes and another neighbor coming to fetch water from our well. I thought maybe I'd heard wrong or maybe someone had a name similar to "ngabbu."

BUT THEN (ten minutes later when it was too late to laugh) I realized my pregnant namesake was the hippopotamus.

The next day, entirely by coincidence, the conversation also turned to hippos. Gaye and Amadou were looking through the Travel Africa magazine from one of my care packages.

I learned this about hippopotami:

• A hippo will kill a person but not even eat the body.
• A hippo only wants what is inside the stomach.
• A hippo will kill a person and eat only the stomach and it will chew the body but not eat it.