Celebrating Our Differences

Here’s a story I picked up from the internet which I’d like to share with you……

NAIROBI (AFP) – A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa, officials said.

The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

“It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a ‘mother’, “ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP.

“After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together, “the ecologist added.

“The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother,” Kahumbu added.

“The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years,” he explained.

This true to life story illustrates how two completely different creatures bond together and become a source of comfort for one another. We are designed to connect with one another…. we are made for relationships, no matter how diverse and different we may seem to be from one another.

We can pick up a great lesson from the hippo and the old tortoise – Let us all choose to look beyond the differences….. let us make that choice to walk the path together despite the differences in thoughts, opinions, lifestyles, beliefs.

Instead of highlighting what we disagree about, let us instead celebrate our differences!