The road tilted gradually upward, then levelled out into an endless straight. The Karoo had thinned behind me, its silence replaced by the faint hum of human activity and the shimmer of heat. Each town along the way seemed smaller than the last — a scatter of houses, a few trees, but dust – everywhere, all the time. The signposts ticked down the distance to Johannesburg like a heartbeat I wasn’t sure I wanted to reach.
Past Colesberg the land began to soften, trading scrub for savannah. The air grew heavier, the sky wider. By the time I reached the Free State border, clouds had gathered — a strange, electric haze that promised a storm. The Beetle protested every hill, its engine whining like a tired child. I’d learned to read its moods by then: a certain rattle for dust, a deeper groan for altitude. Huge transport trucks whizzed by, sucking it into their rear wind vacuum causing me to oversteer.
At a roadside lay-by, I stopped to stretch and gather my wits. The horizon spread out in front of me. The smell of rain lingered, but none fell – it felt almost cruel. Nearby, a solitary windmill turned, its blades slicing the stillness. I watched it for a while — hypnotised by its rhythm, the way it creaked but never stopped.
Driving north again, I thought about how landscapes shape us without our noticing. The Karoo had a way of stripping things back — your fears, your memories, even your sense of self. Out here, everything was raw, honest. There was no room for pretence. Just dust, distance, and whatever truth you were carrying.
That afternoon, as the heat settled into the car like a second skin, I remembered an African story I had once heard about the hippo. It was a way of explaining the world, of anchoring the inexplicable to something familiar.
How the Hippo Was Created
In the beginning, when the earth was new and the animals still spoke the language of the stars, the hippo was a creature of the plains. He lived among the antelope and the zebra, proud of his smooth skin and wide grin. But Hippo was greedy — always eating, always taking more than his share of the sweet green grass that covered the land.
One day, the other animals grew tired of his gluttony and went to the Creator to complain. “He eats everything,” they said. “Soon there will be nothing left.”
The Creator summoned Hippo and said, “You have taken too much, and now you must give something back.”
Hippo trembled. “Please, Great One, don’t send me away!”
But the Creator was firm. “You will leave the plains and live in the rivers. There, you will eat grass only at night, and during the day you must stay beneath the water to cool your greed.”
Hippo wept. “But they will say I still eat too much! They will not believe I’ve changed.”
The Creator thought for a moment, then said, “Then each night, when you leave the river to graze, you will scatter your dung with your tail so that all may see there are no bones within it — proof that you eat only grass and not the flesh of others.”
And so, from that day, the hippo took to the water. He no longer roamed the plains, but he never forgot the sound of the wind in the grass or the warmth of the open sun.
Even now, when he lifts his head to yawn beneath the moonlight, it is said he is sighing for the land he once called home.
I’d always felt sorry for Hippo — banished for his hunger, condemned to prove his innocence forever. But years later, somewhere along that endless road north, I realised it wasn’t just about greed or guilt. It was about belonging — about knowing where your home truly is, even when you’ve lost it. Besides, the Hippo is known as one of, if not the fiercest of Africa’s wild animals.
By the time dusk came, the land had changed again. The air carried the scent of dust and rain; acacia trees lined the horizon like tired sentinels. Every so often, I’d pass a donkey cart, the driver waving lazily, his passengers huddled under blankets against the dust and wind. The radio crackled with static, occasionally breaking into half-caught fragments of gospel.
Somewhere beyond Barberton, I found a small lodge and decided to stop for the night. The walls were painted a tired shade of yellow, and a single bulb flickered above the door. Inside, the fan groaned like an old man in his sleep. But it was a bed, and that was enough.
I lay there, listening to the crickets, thinking about my Ouma and her stories — about how they had carried her through a life of dust and drought and faith. She’d once told me, “Stories are how we keep the dead alive. They’re the only thing the land doesn’t swallow.”
That night, I understood what she meant.