Kids t-shirt
Limbani, the hippopotamus on this kids' T-shirt, was put into the puddling pit at six because he weighed little and did not sink. He spent the whole afternoon treading mud with two other children and they paid him with a brick of his own.
Foto: Jonathan Göhner (@jochieng1) / Unsplash (Unsplash License)Hippopotamus amphibius
Don't come looking for me at two in the afternoon, I'll be in the water.
Rivers, lakes and freshwater marshes across sub-Saharan Africa, always with enough depth to submerge completely and with grazing close to the bank. In Malawi its main strongholds are the river Shire where it runs through Liwonde National Park, where more than two thousand individuals are concentrated, and the shallow shores of Lake Malawi.
At six he weighed little and did not sink in past the knee, and that is why they put him in the puddling pit. He was in there the whole afternoon, going round with two other children, until the light went. When it was over they paid him with a brick of his own, made by him. A single brick doesn't sell and doesn't build a wall. It is a piece of fired mud and that's it. He still has it. It is missing a corner and he uses it as a door stop.
Three years later he got into the channel at the hour of the sun and his mother pulled him out by the arm in front of the whole stretch. The next day he got back in and nobody pulled him out. Since then, from eleven to four, Limbani is in the water with his neck under and his head level with the surface, not moving from the spot and not talking to anybody. The whole stretch walks past and the whole stretch puts him down as lazy. He doesn't correct it. At four he comes out and gets to work.
