Hippo Hunting (With My Camera)

After getting dropped off in Wa I took a tro-tro to Wechiau. I had to buy food before leaving because the hippo sanctuary will cook food for you but they don't provide the ingredients. This is because there are no stores. Villagers near the sanctuary grow their own food and anything they don't grow they bring in from Wechiau.

In Wechiau I went to the Hippo Sanctuary Centre to register and get a guide. Strangely, it was full of knickknacks and bags with Calgary written all over them. I wouldn't find out why until later. Two British volunteers - Alice and Iona - were sitting there waiting to leave and I joined them for the weekend.

Eventually our guide arrived and we boarded the back of a suspensionless pick up truck for the 18km trip to the hippo sanctuary. Half of the road was paved, but the other half made the road to Mole feel like an eight-lane super-highway.

We arrived around 4:30 took a look around. The sanctuary's excursions are based from a tiny village thirty minutes walk from the Black Volta River, where the hippos live. The village is so small that if you turn in all four directions, this is what you see: .......nothing........a tree!.......nothing.........a donkey! Certainly no stores. On a busy day you will see kids playing xylophones ingeniously constructed from bamboo stalks suspended over a hole in the ground.

Our guide, Adams, was only 18 and possibly the most adorable person I have ever met. He asked our permission before going to pray, bless him, as though we had any right to say no. Once he'd finished praying and we'd finished packing our overnight bags, we set off for the Hippo Hide, where we would spend the night.

The Hippo Hide is a tree platform built in a giant tree like the one Rafiki lives in in The Lion King. It's about 6 metres off the ground and sleeping there was so cool! We got set up, ate dinner, applied near lethal amounts of deet, and chatted with Adams about hippos and his family. We watched the river change colour as the sun set and went to bed when the bats in our tree woke up for their nightly hunt. The Black Volta separates Ghana from Burkina, and as night fell we could hear Burkinabe fishermen on their own nightly hunt.

The best time to see hippos is very early in the morning. They're nocturnal creatures, leaving the river at night to feed on nearby grasses. When morning comes they lumber back to the safety of the water and scuffle around before going to sleep.

We woke up at the crack of dawn to go on our canoe safari. The bats were going to sleep above us and the birds in our tree had just started their morning songs. We got into the flat-bottomed canoe without disaster, though Iona nearly capsized us all, and started heading upstream. We weren't even on the water for five minutes when we saw hippos!

They were a family of six - four adults and two babies - just hanging out in the water. We could see their nostrils, eyes, and ears, and then one of them lunged at another. Then I got a clear view of their teeth and truly appreciated just how huge these animals are. Adams said it was either an adult male asserting himself over a younger male, or a tussle for dominance among two females. Apparantly males and females do not fight each other unless a male from a different family of hippos attacks the young.

Hippos are sacred to the people of Wechiau, but their numbers are very low due to poaching (for ivory and meat), slash and burn agriculture, and loss of habitat. There are around 20 hippos in the sanctuary; they are one of only two wild hippo populations in Ghana. Their status as a protected species clearly wasn't enough to protect them.

So in 1999 a consortium of village chiefs decided to do something to protect their sacred hippos. Eco-tourism was the perfect solution as it made the presence of living hippos a cornerstone of the local economy.

Here's where Calgary comes in. Somehow the Calgary Zoo got wind of this project and it partnered with the chiefs to make it a reality.

Alice, Iona, Adams and I went back to Wechiau that afternoon and had traditional Moroccan tea with Adams' friends. If you've never had it, you should. You prepare three or four tiny pots of tea from the same leaves, each one sweeter than the last. You drink it from large shot glasses, and somehow it brings out the best in you.

This entry is already really long, but our tro-tro ride back to Wa is worth reading about because I got peed on by a sheep. Tro-tros are large minivans that seat 13-15 people. Ours had 17 adults in it, 2 babies, 3 goats, and a case of chickens. Eight more men were on the roof, as well as our bags. I thanked my lucky stars that I was sitting next to an open window.

About half way along the bumpy road to Wa - after our driver hit a pig on the road without even trying to avoid it (so sad as it dragged itself away) - I felt something dripping on my leg. I looked at the window in confusion and saw a stream of urine flowing down the side of the tro, much of it onto me.

I freaked out a little. I couldn't believe that one of the men on the roof was peeing down the side of the tro. I didn't make a scene, but I was so visibly grossed out that a kindly passenger explained what was going on. His sheep was tied to the roof of the tro, and this was the most likely source of the urine. I thanked him and dibsed the first shower when we got to the hotel in Wa.