Why Does It Always Have to be Snakes?

I could be really spiritual and say that I haven't blogged in over a month because I'm fasting from it…or I could go with the typical excuse and say that I've been busy…or I could go with the African excuse and blame the internet.

But let's just be honest: I'm lazy.

So, now that I've had my sabbatical, my fingers are rested, and I'm ready to get back to my blog.

I'm promise you nothing exciting has happened….except for when one of the most poisonous snakes in the world was in my backyard…oh, and I went to Spain..but other than that…NOTHING has been going on.

Since the green mamba happened back at the beginning of January, I'll start there.

Maureen (my gardener's daughter) and her friend knocked on my back door wanting to take pictures with me. Before you start to think I'm either extremely egocentric or a huge celebrity, the real reasons were
a) because they are very fascinated with my camera and
b) they like to look at the pictures of themselves

So, we sat on my back steps and took pictures. Quite fun. I taught Maureen how to hold the camera and take a picture. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have a knack for photo taking…which we will bear witness to later on.

Back to the story: we have taken about 10 photos when all of a sudden her friend says something very seriously in chichewa and points. Maureen looks frightened and turns to look. What? What? I asked.

MAMBA! They yelled. I looked and about 15 ft away from us was a long, long, long green snake with his head and about a foot of its body off the ground just slithering and being all creepy-like. (for the record, all snakes are Mambas to Malawians)

I ran to the storage closet and got a shovel while Maureen ran and got her father and mother.

Austin, her dad, came running and immediately started throwing rocks at it as hard as he could. Some would hit it and some wouldn't, but the snake started to get mad and started slithering real fast.

So, here's whats going on in my mind.

1. I have a shovel with a very short handle….
2. I could be this really cool girl and run and chop the snake in half.
3. If it bites me I will be the stupid girl who ran and tried to chop the snake in half and died.

So, i just ran with the shovel over my head after the snake keeping back far enough, but close enough to get a good whack in when I felt it was safe.  It kinda looked like I was fencing with a shovel.

Austin is still throwing rocks at the snake but it hasn't stunned it enough. Now, its headed straight for their house.

Let me put in a brief side note here: Africans are TERRIFIED of snakes. They believe that they are pretty much the devil himself and that all snakes are bad.

Ahem, continuing on…so Mama Chirwa sees what needs to be done and does it:
She picks up a rock, pulls her arm back like she's in Rookie of the Year, and hurls a rock at that snake so hard, I barely even see it happen. WHAP! She hit that sucker dead on. That woman is a BEAST!

I felt it was stunned fairly well enough for me to move in. So I preceded to chop the junk out of that sucker. I just kept hacking away.

After it was sufficiently dead, I raised the shovel above my head and yelled in my best Braveheart voice I could muster.

The Africans thought it was hilarious. They also think I'm a little crazy.

And now…you will see why Maureen not quite understanding how to take a picture just a few minutes before was such bad timing…

She was the one with the camera during the adventure.

And here's the only pictures we got of the snake. I tried to crop them so you could at least see it.





After this, Austin told me: "Mama, the snake would have killed us and would have tried to hurt us because the moon is on this half of the sky. That means, the devils come and bewitch the snakes during this time."

Shows a lot about the culture huh?