Emergency Hippo Procedure 🦛 🆘

Everyone's brave until it's time to get into a flimsy boat and ride over 1,600 sleeping hippos.

“So... what’s the emergency hippo procedure?”

Everyone laughed.

There are certain details that should be disclosed before someone agrees to an activity. In Africa. To go hang out in wildlife. With no fences.

If we’re going skydiving (which we’re fucking not), I’d like to know how we’re jumping out of the plane. If we’re snorkeling with sharks, (which I have) it’d be nice to know if they’re the bitey kind. If we’re going deep into the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabian desert (which I’ve done and was caught in the mother of all sandstorms), I need to know you have a full tank of gas and are a strong runner. And if we’re taking a “peaceful little boat ride” on Lake Naivasha, can someone, anyone- PLEASE mention that where we’re going is only accessible by way of lake that’s home to roughly 1,600 hippopotamuses?

This information was delivered to me at precisely the wrong moment. Not the night before, when I still could’ve faked food poisoning. Not while we were driving there when I could have suddenly been overcome by cramps. Nope, this news was delivered as it was time to get on the boat.

“Oh yeah,” Jana said casually, as if she were pointing out ducks. “We’re going over there,” she pointed.

But my host told me the night before that Lake Naivasha was home to 1600 hippos.

And hippos kill more people in Africa than lions. They can run around twenty miles an hour. They don’t really swim so much as launch themselves along the bottom of the lake like underwater torpedoes if they want. If you piss them off. They weigh several thousand pounds, have mouths that open to nearly 180 degrees, and from the looks of YouTube, can run you down and end your life.

I asked for the EHP- The Emergency Hippo Procedure. And what I was told was, “We just go fast. With the motor of the boat. Because hippos can’t really swim. But they have big tooth and can cut you into two pieces.”

Wonderful.

Then I looked at our transportation.

Calling it a boat feels generous.

It was more of a floating suggestion.

The kind of vessel that inspires confidence only if you’ve never heard the word “hippopotamus.”

Everyone else - Jana and the captain climbed in without hesitation. They were taking pictures of birds. Admiring the scenery. Commenting on the lovely breeze and balmy weather.

As we drifted farther from shore, I started noticing little ears and eyes breaking the surface of the water. Every few hundred feet another family of hippos appeared, floating just beneath the surface like they owned the place.

Which, to be fair...

...they did.

Our guide expertly steered between them while explaining the birds, the fish eagles, the acacia trees, and the history of the lake.

I heard none of it.

I was busy maintaining eye contact with what I was certain would become my bringer of death.

Travel has taught me many things over the years:

How to navigate cities where I don’t speak the language.

How to sleep on overnight trains.

How to pack my entire life into one suitcase.

How to order food using nothing but gestures and optimism.

It has also taught me that every country has a wildly different definition of “safe.”

In Switzerland, they probably have a seventeen-page emergency hippo manual, color coded and translated into four languages. In the US I could count on airlift to come get me if things went south.

In Kenya, the procedure seems to be, “Let’s see how it goes.”

There’s something refreshing about that. And also terrifying.

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to plan everything. The next country. The next apartment. The next career. The next version of myself. As if somewhere there was a master checklist guaranteeing that if I just prepared enough, nothing bad could happen. But turns out I really can’t plan my life. God gives me the next step and asks me to have faith.

Life has been kind enough to repeatedly demonstrate this.

You lose jobs you thought you’d keep.

You leave cities you thought were forever.

You fall in love with places that never become home.

You start over more times than seems reasonable.

You discover that most of adulthood is just climbing into boats without knowing exactly what’s waiting beneath the surface.

I’d still like a more robust Emergency Hippo Procedure. We all would.

Sometimes all you can do is climb aboard, keep your hands inside the boat, trust the guide, and hope the sleeping hippos remain deeply committed to their naps.

For the record, they did.

I survived.

Although I remain convinced that if one of those hippos had so much as yawned, I would’ve peed, fainted and died all in the same minute.

And for the record- getting to the other side was worth it. Free roaming giraffes were there to hang out with. Zebra, walked by us on the road unbtohred. Wildebeast lounged in packs. Even the pythons seemed like they would have been friendly the way our guide happily trekked us to their sleeping dens.

How to launch Emergency Hippo Procedure: just get in the boat and hope for the best.