hippos

Hello, my name is Joe and I'm going to

give you a speech today about hippos and

I'm going to mention one name that you

might have heard before, Pablo Escobar.

So, if you're ready, we'll begin.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you probably

know, hippos come from Africa. But you

can now find hippos in the wild in

another continent very far away from the

hippo's homeland in Africa. Nowadays,

you can find hippos living in the wild

in Colombia. Yes, Colombia. Believe it

or not, it's true. How did these hippos

get to Colombia? Did they swim across

the Atlantic? Well, no. Of course not.

They can't do that. These hippos were

brought from Africa to Colombia by the

notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.

He brought across one group of four or

five hippos. Uh, and the idea was that

he wanted to include them in his zoo.

Pablo Escobar had a private zoo in order

to impress the local population. People

could go and visit the zoo free of

charge. And for many poor Colombians, it

was the only opportunity in their entire

lives to see animals that come from far

away lands.

So, uh, Pablo Escobar managed to gain a

lot of popularity thanks to this zoo. Uh

you could visit there. Not only hippos,

you could see giraffes. You could see uh

penguins and flamingos. You could even

see the plane that Pablo Escobar used to

smuggle drugs into the United States.

Yep. He wasn't hiding it.

Um, so the zoo helped Pablo Escobar to

become very popular, but he was actually

guilty of ruining the lives of many

Colombians as a result of his criminal

activities. Huge numbers of Colombians

were killed as a result of the violence

wreaked in the country uh because of

Pablo Escobar's involvement in the drug

trade.

Despite all of this, he remained popular

thanks to his zoo and other measures. He

also built houses for poor people as

well. For example,

Pablo Escobar's empire was not to last,

unfortunately. Well, unfortunately,

depending on how you see things, like

many other criminals, the authorities

caught up with him in the end, and in

1991, he was arrested and put in prison.

Despite being locked away, he was still

able to control large shares of the

drugs market, and his criminal exploits

continued even while he was behind bars.

But in 1993, Pablo Escobar's story came

to a dramatic end when he was shot dead.

Pablo Escobar's empire came to an end.

But there is one important part of his

legacy which lives on nowadays. And that

is because when Pablo Escobar died, his

uh premises, his home was left

unguarded. And um the hippos that were

on the zoo managed to swim out of the

enclosure uh into the rivers and lakes

around and they then lived in the wild

and thrived. They were very comfortable

in this environment. It was the

temperatures were perfect. The

surroundings were exactly what hippos

like.

So ladies and gentlemen, if you want to

go and see a hippo in the wild, you

don't have to go to Africa. You can

actually go and practice your Spanish in

Colombia as well. Thank you.