Duchess of Edinburgh wakes to hippo outside tent in Zambia
The Duchess of Edinburgh woke in the dark in Zambia to find a hippopotamus looking back at her.
She had spent the night in a tent at the Lower Zambezi Conservation camp. In the small hours she realised the animal was right outside, she told HELLO!, whose reporter is the only writer travelling with her five-day tour.
It was very close. The Duchess said it was as near as if it had been sitting on the chair outside her tent door. She shifted her bedsheet, the rustle caught the hippo’s attention, and the two exchanged looks.
Morning brought more evidence of the neighbours. She found fresh elephant dung by her tent door at the Lower Zambezi camp.
The night encounter came at the start of the fourth day of her visit to the Republic of Zambia, which runs from 14 to 19 September, according to the Royal Household. That day she travelled to Livingstone to see Mosi-oa-Tunya, the vast curtain of water better known outside Zambia as Victoria Falls.
In Livingstone she stopped at the town’s cenotaph, the memorial to those who died in war. She left a small posy of flowers with a handwritten card reading “Lest we forget”.
Conservation has been a thread through the trip. The day before the hippo visit was given over to protecting Zambia’s wildlife, with meetings with the country’s female rangers. That included an introduction to the Kufadza Female Scouts, a women-only ranger unit working against poaching. On 16 September, the Court Circular records, she attended a dinner at Conservation Lower Zambezi in support of reducing reoffending.
Earlier stops took in Lusaka, Lower Zambezi and Livingstone. The programme has also covered eye care and women’s enterprise. On 15 September she visited Jewel of Africa, a Zambian jewellery maker that trains local artisans, where she tried shaping and polishing a quartz gemstone.
For anyone following from home, this is the bit that will stick. Royal tours run on minutes and motorcades. This one will be remembered for a rustling sheet, a stare, and a chair with a hippo on it.
