A little more culture

I suppose with the deadly black and green mambas around it shouldn’t come as surprise that Tanzanians don’t take any chances with snakes. However, sometimes I feel they go a little overboard. I recall several months ago there was a commotion over a snake by the girls dormitory, it was a matter of seconds before the guard pulverized the snake. The odds that the snake posed a threat to the students were slim considering it was black and about 6 six inches long, and half an inch wide after flattening.

This time the snake was a little closer to home. Actually it was in a bush behind my house. The farmer working on the field next to my house spotted the snake and tried to show it to me. It was the classic “you see it there?” “uhhh, I think so [all I see is bushes]…what color is it [can you give me a clue]?” Besides describing the snake as the color of his knife handle (brown) it was also “Kubwa sana” (very big). This created an image of a twenty foot python but after not immediately seeing such a snake I deduced it must be much smaller.

I felt a little better when after the four AV girls arrived none of them could see it either. Eventually I did manage to see the snake camouflaged in green and black. By this time the word had spread that there was snake and somebody had called culture man. Culture man had his machete and another man brought a five foot tree limb. Fortunately, culture man had not been
drinking and seemed unfazed by our last meeting. He called for the stick and walked carefully to within striking range of the snake. Culture man then squared up his legs and targeted the snake with the bludgeoning weapon before making his over the head swing. The snake then fell either stunned or dead in the bushes. And so had to be beaten again, before lifted out and
placed in the clear where they could chop the head off. However a severed head can easily reunite with the body so the head was buried and the body was placed someplace easy to see.

When matron heard about the snake’s head being buried she was very concerned that another snake would come and bring the head to the body and then the two would escape. This meant that the head had to be found and then obliterated with a rock.

The snake was about three feet long and when put on top of dirt was definitely brown in color. Which makes me wonder if the chameleon snake is naturally brown or is it able to change color after death? Unfortunately, I had not thought of these questions and therefore failed to do the simple test of putting the snake on a green background. The fact that the body still twitched for a long time after being severed from the head makes me believe that it could change at least for a short period.