MZIMA SPRINGS, TSAVO WEST, KENYA
This new Year started off with quite a bang. I was contacted by an American TV producer, asking about my work with the Turgwe Hippos. It appeared that their show was going to be all about hippos and she was keen to know if I would be interested in being what they call their “expert storyteller”. Due to the difficulties of coming into Zimbabwe she wanted to know if I would be interested in joining the crew in Kenya, all expenses paid.
It would be for a short duration and Jean-Roger was very keen for me to have a break from our daily pressures. The place they were offering to take me along to an area where I have dreamed of going to since 1999.
Back then a program for one hour was about to be filmed on my life with the hippos but sadly due to personal problems I had had to decline. So had never made it to the Springs.
Now if anyone reading this gets the chance to holiday in Kenya I thoroughly recommend they make it to Tsavo West and see for themselves this incredible piece of nature.
The Mzima Springs is a natural wonder dating back over five hundred years. From this arid lava plain 50 million gallons of clear water gush daily, filtered underground from the Chyula Hills a volcanic area, some 25 miles away. At Mzima there are two pools, the rapid pool and the lower pool and they are home to over sixty hippos and the water is absolutely clear.
This is what makes the Springs so special for me as it would enable me to actually watch hippo behaviour underwater, previously unseen by my eyes here at home in the Turgwe River.
To be offered this dream was wonderful. Having had film crews in the past at home I thought I knew what to expect. They had told me they would need my advice on various ideas they had, and they hoped to show people possibly new hippo behaviour.
Well its funny how things can turn out. The Springs side of the equation was more than I could have hoped for. In that I was unsure if the hippos would behave like Turgwe Hippos who have become accustomed to my presence over the last 17 years of studying them.
I did not know if “strange” hippos would react the same way and yet their behaviour caused me no surprises, apart from seeing one behaviour never spotted before at home.
Turgwe Hippos have always groomed each others hides, normally around the hindquarter area. Spending sometimes up to fifteen minutes licking at the other hippos back or hindquarters. At Mzima two youngsters, a juvenile and about a two year old were playing. Suddenly the younger of the two began licking at the older ones open upper jaw. Actually chewing at his upper lip and licking around the teeth area. It was carried out for only a very short moment but it was definitely not accidental.
The teeth of the hippos seemed larger for their age group than here at home. As funnily enough so did the elephants tusks. I found myself wandering if the waters held some kind of special mineral in them that promote teeth growth. The water really is totally clear and actually quite shallow, you can watch the three species of fish swimming around so easily. A young crocodile hunted by a waterfall, his mouth opened to catch the fish.
I could see the hippos as they moved along the bottom and their feet funnily enough appeared white, an illusion. The entire pool takes on a kind of magical glow. The Labeo the largest of the fish there were so blue they sparkled like blue diamonds. Each boulder and stone on the bottom of the pools looking as if they have been placed there by man, a mosaic of colour and shapes, yet it is all totally natural which makes it even more special.
I tried to watch the hippos like at home but this was more or less impossible as the demands of a film crew have to be experienced to be believed. You have no privacy and no way of escaping to sit alone. As I was their guest I had no choice. They had various ideas that they had put to me, but I soon found out that one cannot tell someone how to do something if they do not wish to hear.
One needs patience with wildlife, one has to learn to hear the sound of nature and not of man. It is not something that can happen to you overnight and in the case of the crew they had such a short window to film in. They were working on American time and energy, which does not work for wild animals. I could tell to nearly the minute exactly what the hippos were about to do but nobody wanted to listen to my voice.
For me personally it was absolutely amazing for my own confidence in my ability to understand hippos, to see them do just what I thought they would do. On one occasion the crew had floated a rubber ring with an underwater casing carrying a camera, hoping to get it up close to the one group of hippos. Thus catch their behaviour under water for the camera.
I could see the bull and most of his family under a thickly branched overhanging tree. I told the cameraman to keep his camera on that group and that when they came out, bull would come first, followed by the family as one movement. That they would probably go straight towards the rubber ring and then pass by underneath, making good underwater shots. The position of the ring showed me it would definitely be the path they sought.
Lo and behold within seconds they did exactly this. This brought tears to my eyes knowing that all these years with Turgwe Hippos have paid off. I can understand all hippos, even other hippos unrelated to them and from a totally different country I can see and predict what is about to occur.
Most people look at hippos and think they do not do much, but if you spend six hours a day for 17 years watching them you will be amazed at the many many different ways they talk to you. Be it vocally, or in movement, in ear flicks, in eye size, in a hundred different tiny little movements. Even in the dark of a hunters moon at night I can hear by their calls and the sound of them in water what to expect. I can hear them speaking volumes of sound and yet others were completely deaf to their ways.
I cried a lot at Mzima but these tears were due more to man/woman than the animal.
In that when you passionately believe in something as I do in the Turgwe Hippos and what I try to achieve for them here. When you know what you are talking about and have it proven to you by hippos that you have never met before. When you try your best to give people what they want, but realize that you are mountains apart from their needs and desires. That to you the animal and its environment must come first, and realize that you are a freak in the people’s eyes. It brings on so much emotion out onto the surface. The constant stress of life back at home is always inside of one and Mzima opened a few floodgates.
An example to the stress here.
I come home knowing that when I left more farms are to be taken for supposed land use by the people, and that there is a small chance that it could happen to this wildlife area where the Turgwe Hippos reside. I come back with Jean-Roger and we are told that the one neighbour has been around. (First time he has visited here in maybe two years) and he had a brown envelope which he refused to leave behind.Normal reactions do not exist in a place where ones home can be taken over night, where there is no such thing as private property, when it is on wild land or farm land or basically where somebody else might decide they want it.
Instead the stomach muscles tighten, the throat goes dry and you wonder if it is an eviction notice! It turned out to be nothing of the sort but for one night both of us tried not to speak out our fears. Instead you are on guard and uptight and often angry with each other.
Then that next day Jean goes on a patrol close to home and to where my hippos are at present living. The Turgwe Hippos always move with the rains and they are at this moment in time nearly all back in the invaded area where the people continue to kill the wild animals.
Jean left me at home, as after Mzima my own emotions were too close to the surface. He and the scout literally found .in a tiny area, some two hundred feet by sixty feet, approximately three hundred feet away from the hippos path up from the river, 40 wire snares all set. Having been set only about one hour previously. Each snare being either double or triple strand wire, capable of killing a large kudu or waterbuck, or a small hippo calf.
They removed them in haste and then saw approaching them in the distance two young men, under the age of twenty. The scout was one hundred percent sure that they were the poachers and of course they live nearby in one of the huts that the people who moved here have put up.
Yet to arrest them would have been pointless as they only carried a machete. As they had not seen either Jean-Roger or the Scout he decided it was best to move quietly away taking the snare bounty, this at home we later destroyed after photographing the evidence.
Both these events, the envelope and the snares, occurred the day after I returned home. Yet on the positive side the herd of elephants of over forty strong are still living right next to our home Hippo Haven. I photographed them in the hippos island literally the very next morning and then saw 31 of them cross the Turgwe a little bit later on that day, but that night they were back at home.
At Mzima I met fabulous African people, the Parks men and the guides who drove the crew around. I learnt that in the Mzima area the Hippo is called Kiboko. The Kenyan guides and Parks men told me to come and live in Kenya, telling me that there are many people like me who care for animals, this was very sweet of them. In Kenya they do not have legal hunting and the policy towards poachers is to shoot to kill, the only way to control poaching. If a man making money knows he may die to do deeds such as snaring an animal, he may just think twice about doing it.
I had visited Kenya back in 1987 when George Adamson the lion man had offered for me to stay with him at Kora and help him rehabilitating lions back into the African bush. Instead I had met and later married Jean-Roger. This time I was lucky to meet another legend of Kenya. Dame Daphne Sheldrick and just like George she lived up to the image I have had of her. A lady who cares and who has been responsible for saving the lives of many elephants over the years and whose knowledge has always been a first amongst conservation practices. A lady to be admired, and loved for her heart and her strengths.
So Kenya was a minefield of emotions, and leaving the animals side was sad but had been totally worthwhile. At Mzima there had been a hippo perhaps a bull, or maybe even an older cow (a female) who at first I had thought might be sick. She/He was hanging around the rapids. Literally spending an entire day and the next day in the faster running water. I could see a few fresh scars on its hide from a fight but nothing life threatening.
Later I managed to escape the crew for mere minutes and went to speak to that hippo. I spoke inwardly as at all times the crew keep a recorder on one and having ones private thoughts and sounds recorded was definitely not my idea of fun. I told the hippo I just needed to see it move to be sure it was ok and within seconds it did. Moving forward quite some distance. Telepathy had worked with a wild Kenyan hippo, it is not just something that occurs with the Turgwe family. This hippo was fine. I could walk away knowing it was not going to die.
I am home now with my own hippos and I hope one day that perhaps Jean-Roger and I can visit Mzima as a holiday.
Mzima translated means alive and the eco system there is certainly very much there thanks to those sixty odd hippos keeping it alive.
Karen Paolillo Hippo Haven Save Valley Conservancy, February 6th 2007.
NB To the American lady I met looking at the hippos with the birding lady guide. I would like to say a special thank you for your kind words about me making your holiday. It is people like yourself who actually are the backbone of my daily life here with the hippos. You understand the passion. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
PS Have just had the first Turgwe Hippo calf born for 2007. Surprise the mother of Chubby, Sabi, Climber and Kubi had a new baby while I was away in Kenya. Born approximately January 20th, seen today February 5th. I do not yet know if male or female but have named it Kiboko, in the Mzima Springs areas that is what they call a Hippo, thought it appropriate as he/she was born while I was there.
