As I sit on this mat and stare at the grass, then the blue sky with the fluffy white clouds, my mind wanders to what would happen if a snake slithered from somewhere in the grass towards me. Or fell from the tree above me. I tell myself that I’d just sit there and watch it gracefully curve its way, either towards me, or wherever else its day leads it. The funny part about this story, is that I’m probably not too far from a snake. I came here, about a month ago, when the virus numbers got to about 6 people, I can’t remember the exact number, and like anyone living in the Capital, I fled to my mother’s house upcountry. On my first morning here, I was in the kitchen, telling my Mom how sure I was that this would be over in a month. She opens the kitchen door that leads outside, and exclaims. Because there was a snake, basking on the hedge, which disappeared the minute it saw her. I, on the other hand, had already let out a shriek and ran into the kitchen store. Then I figured that’s too close to the door so I retreated into the hallway. She’s busy getting a paper to burn so that the smoke can chase the snake away. I ask her if she’s mad, because who in their right mind goes chasing after a snake? She looks at me for a moment, and I knew that she was wondering whether I’d still be this scared if I was a boy child. She then goes down the steps and around to the kitchen garden, to look for the snake and kill it. I keep telling her to just get inside, because I’m scared as shit.
A little backstory on my Mother and snakes, which will turn into a backstory about my extended family and snakes. This is the fourth snake my Mom has seen in this house since we started living here. The first one, was at night. She was dozing off on the couch as usual, when something caught her eye. She sits up, and sees a snake, black, slither from under an armchair (my favorite one) to the coffee table. She’s alone in the house. So she gets up, goes to the store, and picks up a large steel water pipe. She then closes both doors out of the dining/ living room area. Using the pipe, she presses the snake down on its head till it’s dead. After that she left it there, a dead snake’s body in the living room, right next to that glass coffee table shaped like a water lily, and goes to bed. She woke up the next morning to take it outside with the same pipe and burn it in the farm. Second time was in the dining room area. She’s seated there, eating and watching the news, when she hears a, “Plop!” sound. A snake had fallen from the ceiling to the carpeted floor below. This time, her weapon of war was a machete, which she used to slice its neck from its body. The stain is still there by the way, a weird dull brown. She didn’t let the body stay there overnight this time, she took it outside and burnt it. It wasn’t really late, pus maybe me jokingly calling her a witch for sleeping with a dead snake in the house got to her. Kwani hajui jokiso? The third time, was on the same kitchen hedge, which is why she swears to high heaven that there is probably a snake pit in the kitchen garden, where a mother snake lays eggs, which hatch and grow eating the many lizards in this compound, and occasionally bask on our kitchen hedge. She killed the third one by whacking it on the head with a slasher. I still think she’s mad.
My grandmother, a woman whose fearlessness I’ve heard stories about from childhood, has had more, intimate, encounters with snakes. She’s been known to grab snakes by the neck and slam their bodies against walls till they’re dead. She’s also been known to chase her children, now my uncles and aunt, through people’s farms just to deliver a proper beating. Now, an old woman who has survived two strokes, you can still see the strength in her stubbornness, even in the small things like refusing to be fed or walked.
The story below is of my aunt, a staunch Christian now, charismatic Catholic, who would flip if she found out I was writing this, because this story is damn near demonic to her. She was a baby, an infant, really. I assume all her older siblings were at school, and my grandfather was at work, so my grandmother had no one to babysit her as she goes to the farm. So she breastfed her, then went down to the farm with her. (I say down, because said farm is literally on a hill.) She put my aunt down under a tree, somewhere where she could keep an eye on her as she farms. She must have looked away for a bit, because the next time she was looking at my aunt, there was a snake slithering down a tree to her. First instinct told her to rush to my aunt and pick her up, but she knew the snake would be quicker. So she stood there, still, watching. The snake got to my aunt, and started coiling itself around her. My grandmother is still, wondering whether she’s about to watch her first daughter after having three sons, get crushed to death. My aunt is unsuspecting, still at an age where she doesn’t know danger yet. Everything is new and exciting to her, an opportunity to learn and be fascinated. She’s laughing, in that cute little way that babies do where it sounds like they’re choking. Which, of course, made my grandmother’s breath get caught every single second. A breath she couldn’t even dare let in or out too loudly, lest the snake takes it as a sign of attack. It flicking its tongue in and out, licking the milk off my aunt’s cheeks and mouth. Her little chubby hands are on the snake’s body, pinching, touching, inspecting all the light and dark brown patterns of this strange thing with a forked tongue and seemingly boneless body. According to my grandmother, this whole ordeal lasted an eternity. An eternity in which she dared not move, she just stood there, rooted to the ground, afraid to alarm my aunt, which would make her little heartbeat increase, thus ‘angering’ the snake, who’s darting eyes would probably have noticed if my grandmother even dared to so much as move a toe.
It got bored eventually, and started unwrapping itself around my aunt. Slowly, slowly, it got off her, ignoring my aunt’s attempts at making it stay, which included grabbing at its tail. It slid up the tree, which had a petty tall trunk, and into the branches, where it coiled itself and settled.
My grandmother made sure it was far enough, then she ran and picked up my aunt. She literally picked her up with one arm, and ran, her leso flying off her waist, farming tools forgotten right where they lay. She got home, and washed my aunt from head to toe, repeatedly, with sufurias of water, using up one and refilling another to heat up. She repeated it, in a manic frenzy, till she was convinced that the saliva and supposed poison from the snake was washed off.
For two days, she didn’t go back there. She just stayed at home, taking care of my aunt, watching over her, as if scared that the snake would track the little baby down. I’m convinced that this is the most love she ever showed to any of her children, since parental affection was a foreign concept back then.
And yes, you can be assured that I paused every few minutes to see if my writing this summoned that snake’s descendants towards me. Because despite my family’s apparent disregard for the danger that serpent poses, I am still shit scared of them.
ngitomakenas 