Snakes

It all began rather innocently. While preparing the area for my garden, my students came across a snake and immediately determined to kill it (standard Tanzanian response, widespread). I swept in, bag in hand, seized it, and prepared as best a home as I could utilizing a 20 gallon bucket and adding all the natural trimmings (sand, some weeds, etc.) Since this first snake, Bahati (meaning luck), no less than 15 snakes of varying size and ferocity have passed through my home, brought by students as well as villagers looking for money (I turn the latter away). At any one time I have had no more than 4, but it turns out I am a rather lax keeper and inevitably forget to fix the wire mesh across the top of the bucket, permiting them to flee. Thus there is a sort of revolving door at my home. Snakes come, they stay for a couple of weeks, and then they usually take their leave.
You might assume that, living closer to nature than Americans, the Tanzanians in my area would have some wisdom to impart, but I have not yet been privy to it. Most are deathly afraid and unwilling to touch even the most docile. More than one suggested that I feed the snakes corn flour, and this would be a sufficient diet. Though perhaps keeping one's distance and assuming that all snakes are dangerous is a decent survival method, I have not adopted it.
The way in which Tanzanians regard the natural environment/ animals in general is markedly different from that of Americans. Here I will provide just one brief example. Recently to improve my swahili I have been working through Tanzanian elementary readers, and the stories pertaining to wildlife are interesting. In "Ajali ya nyoka" (Accident with the snake), a student steps on a snake, which bites her, leaving its fangs behind as black blood pours from the wound. Another story in this reader is titled "Kusaka ngedere" or to hunt down the monkey. In this tale we learn that "Ngedere ni wanyama wabaya sana. Wanaiba mazao yetu." Monkeys are very bad animals. They steal our crops. In this brief read, the students and parents take up arms, including a gun, bows, and arrows, and quietly enter the forest. Spotting the monkeys, they open fire. A few run away, but most of them are killed, falling from the trees, as the villagers rejoice.
My own students, short of taking up arms, enjoy capturing lizards, bringing them to me, and watching as they are added to the buckets and my snakes take their meal. Most of them have never seen such a feeding event, and are duly impressed.