Hippo once had beautiful hair, until a fire swept through the grass while she was grazing far from the river. This short tale explains, as so many African animal stories do, how a creature came to be the way it is: to this day, for fear of fire, the hippo never goes far from the water.
Read it, and listen to it read aloud in Kiswahili, on Storybooks Kenya. The same story is available there in other languages too.
Written by Basilio Gimo and David Ker; illustrated by Carol Liddiment; translated into Kiswahili by Matteo E. Mwita; read by Lauwo George. Originally published by the African Storybook.