Hippos at the Kazinga Channel, 1977.
© Gary Fordham

“Look, look,” our parents told us, and we looked, amazed.

The water stirred with hippos. They moved from the middle of the river to the edge, and while it looked as if they were swimming, they were not. Adult hippos cannot swim. They walk along the river’s floor, occasionally propelling themselves to the surface. In the water, hippos rose and dropped like ballerinas. The hippos, already on the bank, seemed to hitch their trousers and haul themselves up. In the distance, there was snorting and flashing of teeth. The river boiled around two or three angry hippos, it was hard to know, and then the water and the vegetation settled as their resolved their differences. The hippopotamuses moved up the bank, a hippopotamus migration, and they stood majestic on the shore.

This is how you remember: you take a picture. You will have something concrete to hold onto. That hippo will be yours. You can make as many copies as you like, and you can show people. See, this really happened. You will have tangible proof. And you will own something magnificent.

In a black and white photograph, my father captured three hippos as they surged out of the water. On the bank, a fourth was already grazing.

This is one story about hippos.

Here is another.

A few weeks after we left, the soldiers returned to Rwenzori National Park. They arrived at the Kazinga Channel with machine guns and stood on the banks and on boats, and they killed hippos. They cruised the length of the channel and slaughtered hundreds. The animals were easy targets. They floundered in water slick with blood. Hippopotamus meat is high in fat and is valued for its ability to fill a stomach. Yet even an army could not eat so many hippopotamuses. Most of the bodies were stripped of teeth and left to rot. The water turned putrid.

Even after the devastation of colonialism, even after the harrowing echoes, even as Idi Amin was putting nails in the heads of his enemies and a single roll of toilet paper cost $1.50, Ugandans treated my family with generosity.

In Kampala, my father walked from the market to the post office. It was a warm day and growing hot, the kind of afternoon made for sitting under a tree, and indeed, in the shade of a courtyard, some men were sitting. When they saw my father, they called out a greeting. He walked over. Even after the devastation of colonialism, even after the harrowing echoes, even as Idi Amin was putting nails in the heads of his enemies and a single roll of toilet paper cost $1.50, Ugandans treated my family with generosity. In a letter home, my father wrote: I’ve been enjoying Africa immensely. It’s a joy to work with Ugandans.

The men in the courtyard pumped my father’s hand up and down.

“Hello,” they said again.

“Jambo,” my father said.

They were strangers and had no reason to stand in a courtyard on a Friday afternoon and talk, but one did not need a reason. Talk was the reason. Good humor and fellowship were the reasons. My father enjoyed this about Uganda, this talking without an agenda. They spoke of the coming rains, the United States, Uganda, my father’s job, the men’s jobs, and as they spoke, my father learned he was in the courtyard of a government building. The talk though was mild, and my father would not have thought much of it, except his eyes kept catching on large cardboard boxes filled with ivory.

“Hippo,” the youngest man said, following my father’s glance. “You’ve seen him?” He reached into a box, pulled out a tooth, and handed it to my father who marveled at the plaque. The tooth was so yellow it was nearly brown. In a hippo’s mouth, that same tooth would have appeared white. Everything is relative.