Posted on 09/14/2004 7:51:53 PM PDT by gutshot
Notice this all occurred in "BUSHenyi" district. Damn it - Bush is behind this too! That's it, I'm calling Kitty right away!
Damn I was going to make Hippo Chile tonight. Now I'll have to throw out all that meat.
And if you can eat the whole thing in one sitting, it's free.
They should have gone easier on the Tabasco sauce.
Dusk falls over Burundis lakeside Cercle Nautique Bar Restaurant, and the drinkers settle back for the evening show a visit from a hippopotamus family.
But only one young animal is bold enough to surface and play hide and seek with the onlookers, bobbing and diving between yachts anchored on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. You know why the hippo hides? said waiter Benoit Mazuru. It fears to be killed. Hippos are being slaughtered.
Locals say the amphibious animals are being wiped out by soldiers who earn extra cash by selling the meat to restaurants where middle-class gourmets pay highly to taste its flesh. Experts fear the growing trade in bushmeat, which is fuelled by poverty, is devastating much of Africas wildlife.
Soldiers kill hippos but people fear to denounce them, said Shabani, a fisherman. The operation is done early in the morning. They shoot the hippo, immediately they start cutting the meat, five minutes afterwards everything is finished, then the meat is carried in a van (to buyers).
The animals aquatic visits to Bujumburas lakeside bars are becoming more rare and they have learned to avoid areas frequented by the army, a protagonist in the countrys 10-year-old civil war.
Ive eaten hippo meat several times and it is very delicious, said enthusiast Emmanuel Manirakiza at a restaurant at Gatumba on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Lea Harushimana, a 25-year-old mother, says she celebrates whenever she can get hold of hippo steaks and fries them with cassava, rice or potatoes. We invite neighbours, its a party. Hippo meat is delicious, she said. Reuters
I'll have the dung beetles with poo-poo sauce.
Strange disease=Poachers bullet.
I bet Rosie O'Donuts partner has eaten hippo. ;-0
Ha Ha! The other white meat...
And...former PIC (Philanderer in Chief) Bill Clintoon has reportedly eaten polish hippo on occasion.
Guns Before Butter.
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