I was 12, and I remember vivdly the first time I saw Mirriam in the courtyard, by my mother's kitchen. Chickens and their little ones ran away from her, and People - our African hunting dog - gave way, barking ungracefully while trudging off, tail up, eyes on Mirriam.
I was getting ready to go on the attack with a big stick. My mother heard the commotion, came out and saw the snake and told me, "This one is harmless. All it wants is to go inside the house and make itself comfortable." She seemed completely at ease with the snake while it searched for a path into the house. The door was already open as it usually was at this hour of day anyway. I watched helplessly as Mirriam pulled herself up and through the doorway into the house, disappearing behind the 50 kilogram bag of mealie-meal. There were two bags; she chose a position near the one that was closer to the corner.
In this place there were poisonous and dangerous snakes, and as far as I was concerned, every snake was dangerous and a target for killing. Mother calmed my nerves a little. Mirriam was very different, and I wanted an explanation that would satisfy me. So, a few days later, when the immediate drama was over and still, my curiosity at its peak, I found the moment with mother and asked her about the snake.
"Mommy," I said in a deliberately soft voice, "about the snake. How did you know that snake would not bite; and mommy, why did you let it into the house?" I waited.
My mother was cutting delele for supper, sitting outside the kitchen, a hut situated 20 yards from the main house. It was a beautiful Autumn day. The sun was softly playing behind light clouds giving us just enough warmth while keeping the air cool and the breeze gently going.
"I grew up in the hills of Nadongo." That is how she started, pausing just long enough for my mind to wander to those mysterious hills where my family visited during school holidays, once every four years. Although the journey to Nadongo took only a day, it was a very complicated affair to go on holiday and more so the means to travel there.
"I was my father's favorite girl, being the last born. Whenever he took his axe to go out into the hills he asked if I wanted to follow. Often I said, yes, and took my cisuwo and followed him." She seemed to long for those days when her father still lived. But he died when I was much younger, I could not even remember how he looked. I paid attention to every word my mother spoke. My interest in the snake was no less intense when she seemed to meander to the hills and to her forest walks with her father.
One day, while my mother and her dad were in the forest she found some mushroom spread out on the ground like a large carpet of grey. She exclaimed aloud upon seeing such a bush of mushroom. How on earth was she going to carry all of that mushroom with her little cisuwo? While she gave her thought to this good problem, my mother says she saw her father retreating towards her, his eyes fixed on an object directly in front of him, all the while walking backwards towards her.
"When my father got to where I was standing, a little over ten yards, he stretched out his hands, grabbed me by my right hand, the nearest hand to his, and started to run with me, towards home. We were not too far from the village, just behind the second hill as you travel from the village in the Eastern direction. There were no paths in that place, there were only bushes that grew taller in some places. Elephant grasses were very tall during this time of year and we had to avoid going directly through them unless absolutely necessary.
"It was no use running as we might hurt ourselves. As we slowed down I could tell that my father was very shaken by what he saw or heard out there which I did not see or hear."
Slowly as they approached home the old man opened his mouth in conversation, only that it had nothing to do with what he saw. The mystery would remain veiled for several weeks until one day when mother started to attend school. The old man did not ask the daughter to accompany him into the bush as if to say he was afraid the same thing might happen which happened on that mysterious day.
"One day, in a most unusual move, my father asked me if I would go in the bush with him. I looked in his face, seeing he was serious, I accepted the invitation that I never thought I would get again. I was growing up and I knew I would not make a good companion for the old man on his bush walks much longer. I took a large cisuwo and we were soon off. As usual, he was carrying an axe in one hand and a long, sharp spear in the other. Walking with the old man gave me a sense of security; I knew I was more than safe. I had nothing to worry about."
"We did not go very far from the village. A little over the first hill as you come to the river Mangole, there, by the water he stopped and stooped as if to scoop some water for a drink. His spear and axe on the ground, he bent over the water, indicating that we were not in a hurry to move from there."
"While I sat by the side of the river I was afraid of the impese in the sands of this river, I avoided sitting on the ground while waiting for the old man to get ready to move on. But we were not moving on."
"Then," my mother said in a low stuttering voice, "then my father told me about the encounter he had that day. I sat transfixed by the river as I listened to my father's story of a Spirit that stood by his way that afternoon in the bush."
"What did he see?" I asked impatiently, my mind immersed in the story as if I was with them that day. I could see my mother was deep in thought as she narrated the rest of their story.
"A person stood in front of my father, directly in the path where he was going. Everything happened so quickly and yet in those flash moments he heard many things said that remained with him until many years later, the day he died." My mother said, content that his death brought a good end to some important matters. From the look on her face it was clear she did not count his death a conclusion but only a part of the long story which she was yet to tell me. I too was determined to hear the story to the end. One day it would be my turn to tell my story to my children.
"A real person appeared to my father, standing tall, much taller and bigger than two men put together. My father could tell that he was real because the grass where he stood was lying down as when a person stands on it." She said, relishing the past moments.
The Spirit said to my father, "Take your daughter to school. Her future is far from here. Her children will traverse the world to the place where strange people live."
Did anyone else know what I was hearing? I was in a privileged place to hear these things from my mother. My mother must have kept those words and thoughts for many years until her own children were grown up.
"When that person disappeared, which happened in an instant, as in a flash of a moment, my father says he saw the largest snake he ever saw in his life. 'It was lying directly in my path, piled up high; I knew it was a python.' He said, 'That is when I started to back away as you saw me do,' my father told me." In the moments of fear much confusion came to his head. But he remembered the words very clearly for many years.
"A few days later, a snake came to claim a corner in the house where my father lived. It brought three stones, the size of chicken eggs, made a triangle with those stones, in the corner of the hut. That snake came and stayed in that place, going and coming at will for nearly three months. It would stay in its claimed place for a whole day at times bothering no one, and then it would go out. Nobody knew, let alone cared, where the snake came from, why it was there, or what purpose its visits fulfilled. There was no way to know whether or not it was satisfied by what it found in the home.
"Did you ever ask your father about the snake?" I asked mother.
"Yes indeed I did. I asked him why a snake would behave that way. He told me it was the Spirit who met him in the bush. I believed his explanation. Although very frightening to have a snake in your house, if the understanding is in your heart for mutual coexistence, there is no need to worry about it whatsoever."
"This brings me to the snake you saw the other day. You were much younger when I saw the snake the first time. I am just supposing it is the same one I saw two years ago." She was talking about Mirriam. My interest was revived. I wanted very much to know how a snake could come in the home and go out at will as Mirriam did.
"At first we feared that the snake was dangerous. Quickly I recognized its shape, color, and behavior. Unlike other snakes, when this one appeared it did not raise its head up in anger or fear. It was as if we knew each other. This snake, I felt, was coming home and it knew that. So, I opened the doors in the house and let it find the place it wanted. Sure enough, it entered the main house through the kitchen, where food is stored. There, under the most precious commodity in our house, it put its markers, three stones.
"Amazingly, this snake behaved in the exact same manner as the one I saw when I was much younger in my father's house. It brought round, smooth stones; I could not call them pebbles because they were rather large. I do not know how it carried the stones but one day you woke up and found it had three of them."
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