SNAKES …. In Africa?

In a past blog or email back home I remember referring to snakes as mythical creatures. Everyone in Outjo would warn me of the snakes and yet I NEVER saw one. Over a year in Namibia and no snake that hadn’t been beaten to death by a co-worker and then placed on a stick to chase me around the hospital, ugh memories, has come within 10 feet of me. Well this rainy/snake season has already gotten off to a great start. I was wrong, they do exist, they are real.

About a few weeks ago I was walking to work after my lunch break when I just stopped and held my breath. I couldn’t believe it, on a paved road in the middle of town a long black/gray snake crossed directly in front of me. Long after the snake climbed over the curb and back into the bush surrounding our hospital (yes this is hospital ground) I just stood frozen. No, no way, not a real snake, and black, geeze it could be anything. I tried to convince myself it was just a garden snake. I couldn’t grasp the reality that it was more likely a black spitting cobra or worse a black mamba, both seriously poisonous. Without thinking I just ran across the street and proceeded to the hospital on the other side of the road (yeah there’s no snakes over here right, it just crossed the road).

Well shortly after my “encounter” the hospital informed me that a worker plowing the bush in front of the hospital came across a black mamba and killed it. Holy heck. There is no doubt in my mind it was the same snake. I can’t believe a saw a black mamba only feet away, I’m still just in awe, I’m so lucky and now completely terrified to go anywhere in Outjo. I mean it’s one thing in the bush but on paved roads, in town, ugh, I’m not safe anywhere and in a country without proper anti-venom, I’m so screwed if I get bit. My coworkers said, “I told you, you must be careful of snakes”. I can’t believe I thought I could live in an Africa snake-free, I’m such a fool.

To really add insult to injury, a week after the mamba incident I was doing my normal Sunday morning run (all in town and on paved roads) when I for some reason looked down rather than straight ahead as I normally do just in time to watch my foot almost step on a curled up sleeping puff adder. I screamed and jumped over the snake (thought that would be better than waking up a poisonous snake). A mother and child walking towards me looked alarmed and I gasped, “Snake!”, they quickly crossed the road. In one month a run in with two of Namibia’s “fun” snakes, ugh, I’m so over this. I want to go back to my world where snakes didn’t run wild over the streets in Outjo, actually life in America where snakes are never really an issue for me is sounding oh so good.