ÑAs the sun began to go down we went and sat by the local hippos. At a wide bend in the river the water formed a deep, slow moving pool, and lying in the pool, grunting and bellowing were about two hundred hippopotamuses.
ÑThe opposite bank was very high, so that the pool formed a sort of natural amphitheatre for the hippos to sing in, and the sound reverberated around us with such startling clarity that I don't suppose there can be a better place in the whole of Africa for hearing a hippo grunt. The light was becoming magically warm and long, and I sat watching them for an hour, aglow with amazement.
ÑThe hippos nearest to us watched with a kind of uncomprehending belligerence such as we had become used to at the airports in Zaire, but most of them simply lay there with their heads up on their neighbours' rumps wearing huge grins of oafish contentment. I expect I was wearing something similar myself.
Ñ Mark said that he had never seen anything like it in all his travels in Africa. Garamba, he said, was unique for the freedom it allowed you to get close to the animals and away from other people. There is, of course, another side to this. We heard recently that, a few weeks later, someone sitting in the exact same spot where we were sitting had been attacked and killed by a lion.
Ñ That night, as I turned in for the night, I discovered something very interesting. When I had first checked into my hut the day before I had noticed that the mosquito net above the bed was was tied up into a huge knot. I say 'noticed' in the loosest possible sense of the word. It was tied up in a knot, and when I went to bed that night I had had to untie it to drape it over the bed.
ÑFurther than that I had paid no attention to it whatsoever.
Tonight I discovered why it is that mosquito nets get tied up into knots. The reason is embarrassingly simple, and I can hardly bear to admit what it is. It's to stop the mosquitoes getting into it.
Ñ I climbed into bed and gradually realised that there were almost as many mosquitoes inside the net as outside. The action of draping the net over myself was almost as much use as the magnificent fence which the Australians built across the whole of their continent to keep the rabbits out when there were already rabbits on both sides of the fence.
ÑNervously I shone my torch up into the dome of the net. It was black with mozzies.
I tried to brush them out, and lost a few of them. I unhooked the net from the ceiling and flapped it vigorously round the room.
ÑThat woke them up and got them interested. I turned the thing completely inside out, took it outside and flapped it about a lot more till it seemed that I had got rid of most of them, took it back into the room, hung it up and climbed into bed. Almost immediately I was being bitten crazy. I shone my torch up into the dome.
ÑIt was still black with mozzies. I took the net down again, laid it out on the floor, and tried to scrape the mosquitoes off with the edge of my portable computer, which the batteries had fallen out of, thus making it useful for little else. Didn't work. I tried it again with the edge of my writing pad.
ÑThat was a bit more effective, but it meant that I was trying to write between dozens of smeared mosquito corpses for the next few days. I hung the net up again and went to bed. It was still full of mosquitoes, all of which were now in a vigorous biting mood. They buzzed and zizzed around me in an excited rage.
Ñ Right.
I took the net down. I laid it on the floor and I jumped on it. I continued jumping on it for a good ten minutes, till I was certain that every square centimetre of the thing had been jumped on at least six times, and then I jumped on it some more.
ÑThen I found a book and smacked it with the book all over. Then I jumped on it some more, smacked it with the book again, took it outside, shook it out, took it back in, hung it up and climbed into bed underneath it.
ÑThe net was full of very angry mosquitoes. It was by now about four in the morning and by the time Mark came to wake me at about six to go looking for rhinoceroses I was not in the mood for wildlife, and said so. He laughed in his cheery kind of way and offered me half of a tinned sausage for breakfast. I took that and a mug of powdered coffee, and walked down to the riverbank which was about fifty yards away.
ÑI stood ankle deep in the cool quietly flowing water, listening to the early morning noises of the birds and insects, and biting the sausage, and after a while began to be revived by the dawning realisation of how absurd I must look.
