Daniel McNickle lived in Tanzania for four years under the auspices of the Teachers for East Africa project run by Columbia University and financed by USAID. He also spent considerable time in the wild, as related in his book Teaching and Hunting in East Africa . Many of his actual adventures are reflected in the African part of The Night of the Hippo , which is set in northern Tanzania, Montana, and Washington State, but a liberal amount of invention is woven into the fabric as well. The four stories penned here offer romance, adventure, mystery, and good old fashioned human warmth, mixed with a modicum of the philosophical and the visceral.