Ethiopian heavy cavalry, circa XIV c.

The people of Ethiopia is known to be calm and peaceful, even tranquil, if sluggish ¹; no Ethiopian would normally go to war unless heavily provoked, and even then he’d probably think twice² . This is why, as we’ll see, when an Ethiopian does go to war, he does it with style.
What’s more, and what really matters, is that he does it, in fact, with a hippo³ .
An Ethiopian hippo is a mighty beast which spends most of the day enjoying itself⁴ in the swamps of the upper Nile (the Egyptians are either too wise or too lazy to take an interest in those marvelous creatures). Every male Ethiopian who has come of age should pass a maturity test⁵ and obtain his hippo on a daring hunt in one of those swamps.
It’s known that in order to do this, Ethiopians use long sturdy spears – although it’s anyone’s guess what the points are made of. It has been theorized that those might be bone splinters, sharpened by a local analogue of a whetstone⁶. The point is then fixed to the spear itself with ropes and strings and enveloped in a spiral of fur -it’s useful if you have to (having run out of all other options) tickle the poor creature.
Having captured a hippo, a young Ethiopian should then make it open its mouth (one can either get it very amused or very angry) and put a girdle around it.
A hippo finally becomes one with the hunter when he decorates it, painting intricate ornaments all over its massive body. This part of the initiation depends heavily on coffee, which the ethiopians have grown to know and love throughout the ages.
With legs like industrial-strength grinders⁷, even a medium-sized hippo can produce pounds of freshly ground coffee in a matter of minutes. They are also very useful when it comes to actual brewing: one hippo can, with precision and some persuasion on behalf of the hunter, stand on four presses at once⁸.
Ethiopian coffee has a peculiar effect on the drinker, making him see colourful visions of his ancestors’ spirits and ornamental figures on any available surface – that’s why a new warrior paints his hippo as best he can. There also ancestral motifs in those paintings, and each one differs from another painted by a different Ethiopian.
While painting, a warrior is obliged by the ritual to wear a mask, so that the spirits recognize him⁹. It is also worn in battles, so that everyone knows that he fights not the Ethiopians of the now, but all of them that have ever been¹⁰ (and their hippos).
The hippos have a special effect on the enemy: an Ethiopian cavalry charge takes a good run, and while it does, hundreds of hippos trample the earth producing a low frequency wave of bowl-knitting terror in front of them, which alone can make most armies flee without a fight. The spears add deadliness to an already dangerous army, being able to turn a standing soldier into a man trying feverishly to crawl away form a charging hippo¹¹.
All in all, ethiopian cavalrymen lead quite a peaceful life, riding hippos and drinking coffee, but one wouldn’t like to see them angry¹².
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¹It must be all that heat
²And most likely decide not to
³Actually spelled !hip’!po!, where ! denotes a special sound which means “run for your lives”
⁴Quite noisily now and then
⁵Or die a valiant and probably violent death
⁶A large rock might have sufficed as well
⁷It has lead to an interesting lexical solution: Ethiopians have a scale of finesse for ground coffee based on the mass of the hippo which was involved in the actual grinding. The best is traditionally labeled FTH TBDP (far too heavy to be described properly)
⁸Those have been discovered by the Europeans in the XIX century, and are now known as french presses, although they should by rights be Ethiopian. Glass tubes for them might have come from the Egyptian alchemists.
⁹And probably invite him to their spectral home for a nice cuppa coffee
¹⁰Ethiopians are a very old people, and so there are more belligerent ancestors on their side than there are men in most armies of the world.
¹¹Don’t try that at home!
¹²One would like to do that from under a hippo even less

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art by A.P., text by Marquise de Chiffo-Nier