hippopotamus – Dreamyoga

Quite by accident last night I was taken back to events fifty years ago. These events played out at Kwafala Rapids Camp in the Kafue National Park on the Kafue River a tributary of the mighty Zambezi River. An innocent question about fishing led me back to the river. On one day I went out fishing with a guide / ranger near a reed bed half a kilometre away. He was fully grown and I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. We caught five pike and two bream {perch}. We rowed back to camp and had fish fresh from the river cooked in foil and butter on the braai. The next day I watched him pulled under the water a couple of metres from me by a crocodile.

Based on our success three adult rangers and three children went lure fishing the following day. I was the eldest, there was my sister and a fellow child staying in the camp. We rowed out towards the reed bed and a hippopotamus came up under the boat dumping us all in the river and capsizing. One of the guides could not swim and he tried to grab hold of me. I swam away. I had a bronze medal water life-saving award. He drowned and floated off in the current downstream. The remaining two rangers tried to right the boat but the breeze block anchor prevented it. I got struck on the head by the boat refusing to be righted. I swam to a nearby island and the other two children followed me. Soon the two guides also followed. The one who followed my path to the island was taken down by a crocodile. Thrashing, screaming, more thrashing and silence. The remaining guide, Richard, was in shock. I made him get moving and we headed back cross the islands to within hailing distance of the camp, the other side of the rapids. Getting back into the water after what we witnessed was not easy. We waded and swam between islands for several hundred metres to get near camp. I don’t think the other children really understood. I did. When we hailed camp, the dead by crocodile guide’s wife began her mourning ululation as the tropical dusk fell like a portcullis. It is a sound impossible to forget. We were stranded wet in darkness on a small island in the middle of an African game park, where there were hippos and crocs.

My father drove through the night and came back several hours later with a kayak canoe from another camp. He and the other boy’s father navigated by lamp and our shouts to where we were. They had a gun, blankets and food. At dawn we paddled back to camp.

On the way out of the park I had to write my statement to the police because the policeman was illiterate. I feared I would be in trouble for not saving the drowning man. I carried guilt. I could have done better. I could have saved him. I could not rely on adults. A few weeks later I was back for autumn term in a genteel English preparatory school in Gloucestershire. My behaviour in school was poor and I was in trouble a lot. I had seen things none of my classmates had.

Nobody could see this in me. I looked normal and seemed to fit in, eventually. Retrospect suggests that I met most of the DSM-5 criteria for delayed onset PTSD. I nearly had a heart attack when I was followed by a tiny fish swimming in the Mediterranean in Southern Italy. Years later I went into “tachycardia” during a night dive off Sharm El Sheikh. I self-medicated, I exhibited risky behaviour, I was hypervigilant anxious, I had a suicidal ideation, I was volatile. I was detached and observational and struggled to have friendships.

I think to myself what lies ahead for all those poor souls in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. I had a mere “tickle” of trauma. It played a big part in my life. What is stored in that vast endless well of trauma caused by all the vicious brutality? Millions or what is left of millions carry things, things seen and now unforgettable. They will be as deeply scarred as their countries. The burden of human inflicted trauma is severe, deep and unyielding.

Last night I had a dream with some of the N floor crew from UMIST. A place and a time where the memories are generally fond. Back then life had not gotten overly complex. The ghost of Kafue was perhaps still in its coffin. Buried perhaps by activity and self-medication. I did not tell them of the Kafue.

It is one of those things, by no means unique or special, the effect of which you cannot convey. All of us have marks and scars. A fact we tend to forget in our interactions, which can be insensitive and abrupt.

It never occurred to me to tell my various therapists about the crocodiles and the river. They never asked. It was easier to reach for the Prozac.

This speaks for the quick and the convenient, the preferred modus operandi of our times. Scratch the surface and put on a plaster. Next…

It is my belief that sooner rather than later humanity is going to have to look in a more profound way at the so-called mental health crisis. The malaise is deeper, mind after mind is rejecting the way society goes through the motions of life and living.

The time is not yet, but it is soon.

Here is last night’s dream. I have taken recently to using a knee pillow to ease my nocturnal back pain. It means that I do not start the day with lumbar spine pain however I am now more aware of the hip pain. I am slightly easier to get going of a morning.

The dream starts in a metropolitan area part Kurfürstendamm Berlin and part The City London. It is pan European and upmarket, upbeat, expensive. Despite being smart it has a whiff of decadence and loose sexual mores. If feels a little dated though contemporary, as if things need to change.

I am with two others of my kind. We go into a night club past bouncers with a red rope barrier. We are among many entering the night club even though it is still light. People are leaving their jackets at the coat check. The clients age ~20-40 and are of mixed sex and nationality. They are somehow a part of the “in” crowd. This place is difficult to get into and has an air of privilege. I know that some are “content” creators.

We wander through the many levels of the night club, which is big, vast even. We see people dressed expensively made up with false eyelashes, there is evidence of tattoos and cosmetic surgery. All the punters have dilated pupils consistent with hallucinogen use. The look to be awake because of the pupils. But in fact they are more like walking dead, sleepwalkers, somnambulant. They are all there because it is the “it” place to be. There are floor after floor of them. There is however no music, no sound, no talking. They are zombified. The look animated but are not. The lack of music in the nightclub is very eerie and joyless as are the clientele. This is modern life. We are very surprised.

Now in a dark basement of the club. I am told that I have met the velvet, the purple wolf and that this is the mood. There is anger. I do not see him yet the feeling intensely subjective is strong. Purple is not a good colour. I know that in part this refers to Théun and that he is a bringer and symbol of all that refuses to change, stuck hard and fast in the old ways. There is a lush insistence on indulgence characteristic of the outgoing sixth ray which presents a major barrier to evolution. People are stuck in their ways and vehemently adamant that they are right, they will growl, fight and try to destroy any agent for change. There is a longing for times gone by which no longer are. I have met the purple wolf and that is an emblem of all that refuses to change. It shows that clinging on to old ways and out-of-date cultures, preserving, is not moving forward. There is more meaning to this meeting which will become apparent over time and indeed layers are coming as I type.

The night club has now changed into an underground theme park water ride. People are in “hollowed out logs” which are like little boats and are being driven around the “amusement” park by the flowing water. There are simulacrum rapids and now people are vocalising, shrieking. In some of the logs are people I know from the past in London. I am on the side by a sluice in which is an adolescent hippopotamus. It is trying to get out into the wider theme park and succeeds. The hippopotamus is friendly towards me. I know that it wants to turn over the log-boats for fun. At the side of the water course there is a pool which is filled with mid length crocodiles, not full Nile size but a couple of metres long, lithe active and hungry. They are the crocodiles belonging to the people in the log-boats. I know that these crocodiles are the dreaming symbols for cumulative shortcomings of the people in the boats. There are many of them. One of the crocodiles is exiting the pond and starting to make to attack me. It is snapping at me. I pick up a slightly smaller crocodile and place it horizontally into the opening mouth of the attack crocodile. I know in the dream that the attack by the crocodiles of the people in the club / log boats will be ongoing and unlikely to stop anytime soon.

The dream ends.

Tag: hippopotamus

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The Somnambulant – Purple Wolf and Crocodiles Dream – 08-08-2025