Tragedy Turned Tender Friendship

Image credit: African Mecca Safaris

26th December 2004 began as a normal day. The holidays were in full swing, and many vacationers had travelled to the Kenyan coast for some sun and sand. Then, a series of unfortunate events led to a story for the ages.  

Just a few days prior, an unexpected heavy downpour outside Malindi town washed a bloat of hippopotamuses down the Galana-Sabaki River and out to the Indian Ocean. Area residents had been hard at work for days making efforts to relocate the hippos when the ocean tide began to rise on that Boxing Day. The beautiful blue-green waters became a menacing grey. Rescue efforts were abandoned as residents fled for safety. A warning went out on the news; a tsunami whose point of origin was over 6,000 kilometres away had hit the Kenyan coastline.  

The following day was the calm before the storm. As residents returned to the beach to evaluate the damage, they found a small hippo stranded on a reef. Despite his size, they soon realised he was less than a year old and had been separated from his mother. Even though he was very young, fear made him extremely aggressive and wilder than is typical of a calf; this made rescue efforts very labourious. A civilian volunteer finally managed to hold him down as he was tied with fishing ropes and the Kenya Wildlife Service was alerted. During the wait, the hippo was christened the name Owen, after the man who had pinned him down and allowed for rescue efforts to proceed. 

News of the stranded hippo reached Dr. Paula Kahumbu, the chief environmentalist, at a Mombasa-based animal sanctuary called Haller Park. She immediately left for Malindi to get the hippo and bring him back to the sanctuary. By the time Owen arrived at Haller Park, he was tired, scared, and alone. Immediately he was placed into an enclosure, Owen looked around for somewhere to hide. He caught sight of another creature in the enclosure with him. It had a similar colour, shape and size as his mother. He ran to it and trailed behind it as baby hippos do around their mothers. The creature was a 130-year-old tortoise called Mzee. Mzee was taken aback and hissed at Owen to scare him away. Owen backed away at this reaction, but not for long. Within a few days, his persistence won Mzee over, and the giant Aldabra tortoise became Owen’s adoptive parent.  

Owen and Mzee were an odd pair; the unusual bond between a baby hippo and an ancient tortoise caught the attention of people all over the world. People flocked over to Haller Park in their hundreds to see this dynamic duo for themselves. The two did everything together and had even developed a communication system. Their friendship lasted until March 2007, when Owen was relocated to a different enclosure within the park containing another rescue hippopotamus.  

Theirs was an unexplainable love that transcended age and species. It showed the world the complexity of familial bonds, and the unexpected positive that can sometimes arise from a bleak situation.