Marie and Carol's Ugandan Adventure continues

Behind the Huge Stork is the building I hid from the "Hippo's "!

Dear Friends
This blog is a picture gallery of the first part of my Adventure with Carol, but primarily of our time at Murchison Falls and Lake Mburo. We camped out all three night, but the first two were in a small tent (Murchison Falls) and the third in a large tent with two full size twin beds(Lake Mburo).
Both places elicited lots of laughing about Hippo’s and Wart Hogs and the difference between the two. I had seen these awful pics fellow missionary Diana had taken of Hippo bites and was quite aware they were considered the most dangerous of animal to humans, especially if you get between them and the water. So, I kept my distance, viewing them from a safe distance while they were swimming or from a boat

Well, we had been told not to leave any food products in our tent at night, as the Wart Hogs would tear apart a tent for a crumb of food. Knowing that the trail for both the Hippos and Wart Hogs went right past our tent, I dutifully left “sweet” snacking for the daytime
.
One evening while Sheba was teaching Carol drumming and Halimah attempted to teach me to dance Rwandan style, I noticed from the corner of my eye two large Hippos coming toward us from the trail. I ran (not such a bright thing to do in any case) behind a nearby building , as I was definitely between them and the water. I was comparatively hidden but couldn’t understand why no one else had chosen to escape a potential Hippo bite, but were, instead, all laughing hysterically. ..
Since Carol video taped the entire fiasco, I may as well admit that they were not Hippos, but , rather, two VERY large Wart Hogs, just out for an evening stroll.. Hence the laughter from my audience, as I scurried behind a very small building.


Then the next night at Lake Mburo we ask a Game Warden if anyone had ever been eaten by a Hippo there. He replied “Lots of people, but never him”, having thought we had ask if anyone had eaten Hippo, not BEEN eaten by a Hippo, which again caused a major laughter attack.
When he then took us to our tent ( it was pitch dark by then) we quickly realized we were ALONE in the middle of nowhere, again aside the wild games evening trail.. He assured us that the kerosene lantern (pictured in Carol’s hand) would protect us from any night time prowlers. What we didn’t know was the lamp burned out by midnight and what we indeed realized the next morning was that the Very LOUD, Very CLOSE Roar we heard at 3am was indeed a Hippo (or Hippo’s) walking past our tent..

On our way to our last stop (Lake Bunyoni) on Part One of our adventure, We did the Tourist stop of getting our pictures taken at the Equator line. It really is pretty cool (now that’s a pun for ya) to be able to straddle the equator line. I captured a mini video of the demonstration they do of how the water flows one way on one side of the Equator and the other way on the other side by using a flower petal, then they finish it off by showing how that same petal gets sucked straight down, when the demonstration is done on the Equator line .
--------Sorry, guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.
So, please enjoy all the Wild Game and wilder women (not really-smile). Next time you’ll get to celebrate Carol’s Birthday (and Carol) with me. Then we move onto picking up Bill at Kigale Airport in Rwanda and all our Adventures there, primarily trekking Mountain Gorilla’s.
Stay tuned! !!!
---------------Marie--------- ..