Before I knew it, Easter was upon us. I learned it was a tradition on Easter Monday for expatriates in Malakal and the surrounding area to come to Doleib Hill for a potluck lunch. We were in charge of the ice cream. We expected fifteen to twenty people, so we needed lots of ice cream and we only had the old kerosene fridge. Lois had the task well in hand. She collected milk for several days and began the slow process of freezing ice. It took two days to freeze two or three trays of ice. The day before the event, Bill cooked the ice cream ingredients and started cooling it enough that the ice we had available would freeze it into ice cream. They placed the large bowl of ice cream mix in the refrigerator and no one opened the door for any reason short of an emergency.
Easter Monday morning there was a sort of emergency. Someone had shot a hippo near the Sobat site, and meat was available for sale. Meat was a rare commodity, and hippo meat was tender. Bill bought a large hunk of meat and put it on a plate in the fridge. He planned to deal with it after the guests had gone.
The guests arrived, and we got acquainted. Lois informed Bill to get moving with the ice cream freezer, the old-fashioned hand-crank variety. So, he removed the ice cream mixture and prepared to put it in the freezing cylinder. At that point, he noticed something pink floating on the top. Had he put kerkedeh (hibiscus) in the ice cream? he wondered. No, he couldn’t remember doing that. Just as he started to stir it together, the realization dawned on him that the ice cream mixture had been sitting under the plate of hippo meat. He checked and sure enough, blood from the hippo meat had filled the plate and dripped into the ice cream mix. UGH!
What to do now? he wondered. He told Lois, and she nearly fainted from the thought. But in good explorer tradition, he carefully dipped out the blood and finished making the ice cream. He threatened to tell everyone there was hippo blood in the ice cream, and she threatened him if he did! Everyone ate it, although Lois, Bill, and I had somewhat less than everyone else. No one got sick, and no one was the wiser.
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