Almost swallowed

I was almost killed by a snake that tried to swallow me.

In a year's time or two, I would start schooling. Meanwhile I stayed home with mom. The school teacher's house in which we lived was located close to bushes. The pit latrine was even closer to the bushes. Not surprisingly, a snake came looking for food, and found me sitting on the pit in the latrine, doing my thing to relieve myself. It started preparing me for swallowing, without killing me first.

Mother was in the house, dressing up after a bath. The irony is that she used the same place where in a few minutes I would be in mortal danger.

It was just after tea break in the morning in 1963. Classes were going on and my father was teaching mathematics to a class of grade 7. Mother was in her bedroom, putting on her light-blue petticoat when my scream reached her. (She kept the petticoat as a reminder for many years.)

Upon realizing there was a snake rubbing against my left foot, a very large snake in my eyes, I stood up from my squatting position, pulling-in all the air I could master in my lungs, I gave out the loudest and longest scream I could give, and waited. I could not move because the snake was coiled up at the entrance into the latrine.

Fearing even to breathe, I stood there in total terror as I watched and waited. My pants were under the belly of the snake and I was totally helpless.

My mother came to the latrine and immediately saw the snake, threw the dress she was holding down and raced 300 yards to the classrooms where my father was standing in front of the class of forty-something, boys and girls. She banged the door and fell to the ground in front of the class, saying, "The child, a snake, the toilet!"

My father did not wait to be given more details. The entire class of forty something students poured out of the classroom racing for the house and for the toilet. The entire school followed, some carrying stones, others sticks and still others too afraid to fight just following to see the action.

The moments of waiting became an eternity for me. The snake was moving upwards, and it was drawing itself inside the cramped space of the toilet. I stood still, unable to do a thing.

The entrance into the toilet was facing away from the main house, placed nearly thirty feet away. The walls of the latrine rose up to the height of a very tall man. The entrance was designed in such a way that there was an extra curvature and an extension of the wall leading out. The extended wall was shorter than the rest of the building. It was possible to come and stand at the entrance and look inside, and see a person standing up because of the shorter wall.

My father rushed in and tossed his hand, grabbed me by the shoulder and air-lifted me out of the latrine over the shorter wall. In a few moments I was standing outside in the hands of some strangers - boys who came to fight.

Assured of my safety, my father and the boys returned to the main task of killing the snake. In minutes the snake had moved out of the small building attempting to reach a thick bush. Sticks as thick as the snake itself were falling on its head. Stones were crashing into it from all sides. It stopped and coiled, and eventually stopped and died. Later I learnt that a python is not at all easy to kill. Even if it dies the heart goes on beating long afterwards. Whether true or not, you learn many things about strange animals like the python than nearly killed and ate me.

My mother who was holding her head with both hands, crying all the while, received me in her hands and took me inside the house.

I came out later to look at my adversary. I had never seen such a big snake; I was too young anyway. All the snakes I ever saw were tiny and cowardly. They mostly ran away or tried to scare people like the cobra. Others were green grass snakes that too ran away if you found them stealing eggs from chickens.

Many boys in the school were alarmed at the size of the snake that nearly killed me. Fortunately, as my father later said to us, it was still young; a full grown python would have used a different approach to deal with its prey. It would have killed me first. I was told by others I would have had no chance if I had met that same snake outside the latrine, if it had used its natural means of catching prey. It would kill me by suffocation first.

The snake was skinned; its skin was claimed by one of the big boys who killed it, saying it had medicinal value for which it is priceless to him. We asked him to leave it fully displayed for all to see, until evening.

If it was in the day of Facebook we would have posted pictures of the snake... and perhaps, the boy!