Hippo 2: Making A Sjambok

(Part 1 refresher)

http://all-things-manly.blogspot.com/2011/12/hippo-hunting-part-one.html

After the hunt we made our way home with large pieces of meat in out large coolers. I spent most of a day with Jake and Linz helping to cut the meat and bag it for freezing and eating. As far as percentage, we probably didn't bring home even half a hippo, but we were eating on it from September to April IIRC!

That's most of only one back-strap!

The meat is very good and tastes mostly like pork, but you can detect a unique flavour of its own. I even dry-rubbed one and make a big "pulled pork" in our smoker.

Now for the interesting part...

Hippo hide is incredibly thick.

So thick in fact, that it makes them look fat. They're not.

Look closely at the slab my hand is holding. You can see the dark outer skin and down where my fingertips are, meat. 

No fat. 

The thick white layer? 

It's skin; all skin.

It's so thick that it won't even bend all the way over (you can see on the left that they're pushing it down)

Now, you may still be wondering what a Sjambok is. It's a semi-flexible rod/whip made of dried hippo hide that's been used in Africa for many, many years. They're truly unique because they are stiff like a Massai cattle prod. They're also flexible when swung hard; acting like a western whip. They're great for killing snakes.

An interesting part is they way they cut tissue. According to what I've read they will leave an outright cut like a razor blade, but, the cut has crushed edges reminiscent of a blunt force wound. I could cut finger sized twigs off a tree with mine. 

Unfortunately they have a bit of a stigma since they wee used by South African police with horrendous results.

How it's made....

We brought a big, sheet-like section home and washed it. Then I cut it into thick strips like obese snakes. These were pierced on each end and hung from rafters in a shed. We put bricks on the bottom end to keep them straight as they dried. Hippo skin has natural oil which preserves it even in raw form. ll you have to worry about is proper drying to avoid rot.

The sheet made about twenty; here are four hanging.

After drying for several weeks, I picked one, cut it down, and got to cutting. I removed the scaly outer skin and cut it semi round. 

I had read that to make them tough and round, that they were rolled for hours between heavy steel plates. I decided that there was no way that every bushman and Voortrekker carried steel plates around though. So I got the thinking about how steel is processed; now steel is often formed by rolling it between plates. But in older days....Bingo! Hammer and anvil.

Dad had  20 lb sledge hammer that I used for my anvil and a heavy hammer for beating. I spent hours and hours and hours and hours beating on it getting it round. It turned out really great. It made you see how wicked the things really are.

To give you an idea of how much time I spent beating the thing, I was getting fitted for a suit months later and the lady asked if I had broken my left shoulder when I was little, since it was so much bigger than my right!

Here's the finished product

Notice the taper so end will whip and the handle stay stiff.

With time, it will darken and look even smoother and better.

So there you have it!

-Luke