The Ever Busy Floodplain

As most of you know we live next to a floodplain for the Okavango River. As we desperately wait for the rains, there is a minimal amount of water in the flood plain, but enough to draw animals (both domestic and wild) to sustain themselves. Eventually, after the Angolan Highlands receive all their rain for the year, the Okavango River will gradually rise and the floodplain will be full yet again. But in the mean time, there is a lot of activity going on in the flood plain. Every morning cows, donkeys, and an occasional horse migrate along a path on the north side of our plot to enter the floodplain. Like clockwork, the animals stage at the entry point until about two to three hours after sunrise. Your guess is as good as mine on why they wait, but I have a feeling it is to avoid crocs and hippos (as I will explain later).     

Throughout the day, the animals (mainly domestic) graze on grasses, lilies and whatever else they can get. Women also leave early in the morning to collect reeds and grass thatching for the traditional houses in this region. The thatching is used for the roofs of the houses and the reeds are used as walls for outdoor living spaces. Children then join in on the activities and play in the in the water; jumping off a variety of sandbars, chasing each other, trying to pile into a Mokoro (traditional canoe) or flailing about in the water. 

Again like clockwork, about three to four hours before sundown, the flood plain is vacated. On most days this correlates to the time you hear the first hippo grunt in the reeds. Unfortunately, every now and then, a cow gets stuck in the mud and eventually dies (either naturally or by a farmer’s gun). The cow is then left to whoever wants it/or who can get to it, the dogs, and an occasional croc (although we have never seen this).  But we did experience something both exciting and terrifying the other day.

It was about 6 pm and we just got done eating dinner on our front porch. When we were sitting around I heard a slight splashing in the flood plain that I knew was a hippo. I walked down by myself and saw that it was on the opposite side of the flood plain and was walking towards the main channel of the river. I quickly told Bridge there was a hippo and she came down to check him out too. As we noticed, just before he did, there were to lone donkeys still on a sand bar in his path. Then in the blink of an eye, the hippo spotted the donkeys and charged them.  The hippo covered approximately 100 meters in about 10 seconds. If you convert that it is about 36 km/hr or 22 mph; quite impressive and also terrifying. After seeing the hippo run, we now know why all the domestic animals vacate the flood plain at night!