Have you ever seen real live hippos only a few meters away?
They are quite impressive – and dangerous. Did you know that each year 2 900 people in Africa die in hippo-attacks?
They are quite impressive – and dangerous. Did you know that each year 2 900 people in Africa die in hippo-attacks?
Despite this fact, I and some others decided to take a boat
and visit these killing-machines in the Lake Hawassa (also called Lake of Love
– quite ironic if you know that death is lurking in the depths…). Anyway, we –
as brave Swiss – couldn’t resist the opportunity to see these intimidating animals.
After a 30 minutes gentle cruise on the lake we spied the outline
of a hippo. Then, a second one… Third one… fourth... Suddenly, we were
surrounded – no way to escape. Then the first hippo attacked our boat! It
rocked heavily and we desperately clang to the railing. Phu, by a hair could
save ourself from landing in the dark brown lake. Then, a second hippo crashed
into our boat – and it overturned. Plaaaatsch – the three of us dived into the
water. The only thing I could think about was the shark movie “Open water”
(although sharks are - according to experts - much less dangerous than hippos.
A fact that didn’t really calmed me down). The hippos approached quickly and we
screamed like hell. Fortunately, we’re all good swimmers. We saved ourselves on
the shore – two seconds later we would have ended up as hippo-dinner…
Hahahaha, noooot. You almost believed it, right? Sorry to disappoint
you guys, we had non-life-threatening moments with the hippos (although they
are in fact Africa’s most dangerous animals along with mosquitos) and it wasn’t
as adventurous as written above. Actually, we enjoyed the trip to the hippos,
saw a baby-hippo and took a lot of pictures. And we had a safe trip back.
As usual, I’d like to introduce another business idea of one
of our participating teams, called EthioPay. EthioPay is a platform that will
facilitate e-commerce in Ethiopia. The platform will provide consumers and
businesses the opportunity to buy, sell and auction items online by paying with
airtime as the currency and using your mobile phone. Therefore, EthioPay will
provide both a marketplace website and a mobile payment system. It’s a unique
and innovative solution that addresses e-commerce and online financial
transactions problems in Ethiopia.
Still disappointed about the (lame) hippo-story? If you’re
interested in a real horror-story, please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2N9YMH4H5Y.
Your hippo-whisperer,
Ari
Ari
Très bon
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