There once was a girl called Philippa, which if you go back to the time when people spoke Latin means Phil lover of Hippo(horses)and guess what they called me “Hippo”. This as you know is a very large and fat animal which loves living in wet and muddy places. Well, I don’t mind getting muddy and wet and apart from a dreadful period when I was a teenager, I was NOT fat. Tall and strong and large but NOT fat. I could walk quite long distances, up hills and down. I even did a bit of rock climbing. I did NOT enjoy climbing up rocky places, but I loved coming down (this is called abseiling). You push yourself away from the rock surface slide down the rock for a while and then kick yourself off again. This was great fun and I really enjoyed it. We would have to wear helmets in case we slipped and fell off the rock face. (If that happened, we would have been in great trouble and become quite stupid and useless.
BUT I did love horses. My first horse was called Freckles. He was grey with slightly brown spots on top of the grey. He learnt to buck (kick his legs in the air) whenever I put my hand on his backside. (I think I was quite a horrid teenager). When my brother Stephen and I rode to school in Addis Ababa, I would put my hand on his backside whenever we passed a policeman or a soldier and he would buck and of course, they had to leap out of the way. I would apologise and say I was sorry (which actually was a lie) because I would do it again whenever we passed a policeman. We only went on the road in the rainy season (keremt) when it became too wet and slippery on the grassland.
In the dry season, we could ride on grassland and our bad behaviour could start again.
Nowadays there is an all-weather road from Addis Ababa to Mulu and beyond so no one can be as mischievous and naughty as we used to be.
Another exciting thing I remember was crossing the flooded Sibilo River. The horses could swim across, and we would push them into the river, and they would swim across and be caught again on the other side.
We had a rubber dinghy that we could sit in. A rope would be thrown across the river and caught on the other side. We would then get into the boat and be pulled across. I was always terrified that the rope would break and that we would be swept down the flooded river and drown.
Nowadays there is an all-weather road which makes it much easier and safer to cross the river. (but not as exciting}.
The rivers I remember are the Sibilo, the Daneba, the Alaltu and the Bomfata
The first three we would have to cross to get to Mulu. But the Bomfata was the other side of our house, but it had a pool we could swim in. It was very cold, but we swam in it until we got too cold. Then we could get out and dry ourselves and get warm with coats on. The Bomfata had a small waterfall coming into it and a small cave the other side where green river snakes lived. Luckily, they did not like the noise we made and would hide away at the back of the cave and not come into the water.
We used to have picnics there and could walk to and fro unless you were lazy. ,(which I was) and I would try and make sure I had a horse to ride up on, but my family usually refused to allow me to.
I wonder if anyone uses the pool nowadays in 2023. However, it is a memory that I cherish and even feel cold when I write about it.