25th March 2008 : And with a mighty roar, down came the flood...
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 08:49PM Hippos are strange, unpredictable creatures. It was 8.15 last Thursday morning, and just as we were finishing breakfast, already sweating in the wake of another stiflingly hot day, a hippo emerged from the river. In the bright, scorching sunlight it walked up out of the water (at a time when most hippos were finding what shade they could in the cover of the reeds, or in secluded pools left in the shallow stream, which was all that was left of our river…). The lumbering beast made its steady way up the steep sandbank, and plodded away into the thick bush. It occurred to me that the hippo probably had a very good reason for its unusual morning meander, but I was none the wiser – perhaps the thick bush provided more respite from the heat than the dwindling river? Or perhaps the hippo had an inkling of what was coming?
A hippo leaves the river at 8.15am, and disappears into the bushland
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That afternoon, the first splashes of rain cascaded down from an angry sky, hard and stinging, bringing instant relief and releasing us from the clinging, claustrophobic heat. The shower was short and sharp, and did not last long, but while they fell, the raindrops were fat and full of promise… What joy! The rains have broken!
First rain - fat heavy drops promising more to come...
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Rain blowing onto the balcony above the river...
First rain on this Yellow-billed Stork
In the evening we watched the sky for hours, bewitched by the huge electric storms raging all around us, massive fronts of lighting illuminating the entire firmament like a giant fireworks display, on and on into the night. I felt awe-struck, and privileged, and very, very small before that gigantic stage. There is nothing quite like Nature for putting you in your place, for confirming that – in the big picture – you’re really not all that significant…
Fast forward to 3.15am and I am awoken from a deep sleep by a fantastic roar. For a moment I am disorientated, and don’t know what’s happening. And then, in the haze of my early morning mind, it dawns on me: the river is flooding. I stumble out of bed, the moon is large and luminous, and I can see the huge river tumbling and crashing below our balcony. The roar was from this wall of water, plunging its way coastwards in one massive flash flood, whipping yesterday’s placid shallow stream into a frenzied deluge.
From this...
...to this, in the blink of a sleepy eye...
There’s something quite awe-inspiring about a big river in full flood. Even though you know you are safely above its danger zone, you still have to fight your animal instinct of fear which makes you want to run from it, such is the power of that water and the thundering sound it makes as it crashes beneath you, red and muddy from its cascade through upcountry farming areas where poor land management has left the earth bare and vulnerable to erosion with every bout of rain.
It has rained ever since then (with the obligatory accompaniment of an insect invasion, including a very pretty moth that landed on our bathroom mirror, above), the stormy clouds obliterating all view of the full moon rising at the weekend. A foray into beautiful Tsavo West National Park rewarded us with muddy elephants, a herd of giraffe, a couple of elegant Lesser Kudu and more than a few buffalo…
Lesser Kudu doe in Tsavo West...
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A wonderfully muddy Tsavo West elephant bull
Haughty giraffes...
Yesterday, it was cloudy and rainy all day, the crocodiles starved of any sunlight and barely any warmth…then today we awoke to a totally different morning: back to the scorching heat and the crocodiles returning in droves to bask on the sandbanks, while the Goliath Heron, too hot even to finish washing, just sat down in the river and stayed there (and who could blame it?) I had to take a cold shower at midday, just to fortify myself for the onslaught of the afternoon heat.
Big croc, little croc...
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Happy to see the sun again...
But for the Goliath Heron, it's just too hot...nothing to do, but sit right down in the water!
Tonight, as might be expected, the thunder and lightning are raging again, huge storm clouds fomented in the heat of the day, now towering overhead…and the rain continues, and the bugs multiply, and the flowers prepare to launch into their reproductive cycles once again…the tiny pretty blue commelina flowers are already blooming everywhere you look (including on our nascent lawn) and the sanseviera we transplanted into our garden (both on the balcony and outside) are sending up a proliferation of shoots, the new spikes breaking the surface of the earth like spiky aliens, and reaching up towards the light…
Commelina colonizing our new lawn
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Garden sanseviera
New spikes emerging
Reader Comments (11)
Didn't I *tell* you it would rain on my birthday!
YAY!
Indeed you did! But I hope you got some nicer gifts than just rain for your birthday (I know in England you don't look forward to the rain quite as much as we do out here!)...Happy Belated Birthday, by the way :)
Hello - what a really lovely blog you have created here. You have managed to capture some wonderful wildlife scenes. The hippo took my breath away. Delightful.
Great photos as usual. I love the before and afters of the river. That hippo sure knew something. I'm getting nostalgic for Africa. I'm off to Italy and Egypt in a couple of weeks but Egypt feels like a completely different Africa.
Great Blog! I just discovered it. It really makes me want to get to Kenya. I hope the unrest there hasn't affected you.
Gary
Everything-Everywhere.com
As always, nice to see you here Suzanne - I hope you have a wonderful time in Egypt and Italy - two countries I have not visited yet, but both are high on my "Must See" priority list!
Welcome to my blog and thank you for the kind comments, Pollydot and Gary. That's quite some journey you are on, Gary - wow! When are you due to reach African shores? (Thanks for your question about the unrest - fortunately we were in a very quiet part of the country, and had it not been for reading the news on the internet, we would not even have known anything was going on!) Touch wood, all seems to have been sorted out now, and visitors are returning to Kenya again...
Love the pictures, nice blog :D
Amazing how the river got that big ! Good to see that the rains have come, now the temperature has to go a bit lower !! I send some cold to you because we want spring to begin !
Audrey
Audrey - imagine if the river had come up this high when you were here...we would all have been up in the middle of the night trying to rescue Rob's microlight....either that, or he would have turned it into a windsurfer!
Welcome, BeakerDude - nice to see you here :)
Haha, I was thinking the same thing when I saw the picture of the river !! A few years ago, we had that problem in Canada with our canoes ; they were being washed away in the middle of the night ! Luckily we could save them and leave the island in the morning.
Now, I can really imagine why you don't have your workingdesk in front of the window....what an incredible views......yes, I'm a bit jealous !!
Audrey