The hut is dark and quiet. The calves in the room on the end bring warmth into the home, shielding it from the surprisingly crisp steppe night.
He is sleeping peacefully, covered in a red checkered blanket. His neck is carefully arranged on a wooden platform, his long red braided hair set meticulously on the cow-hide mattress.
He half-smiles. Perhaps he is dreaming – likely of cattle.
His dream causes him to shift, just a wink, and to rearrange his blanket.
Suddenly, an agonizing cry breaks the silence of this home. There is no longer a half-smile on his face, but a look of surprised terror. Sudden chills cause his body to quake as he struggles to find the source of the excruciating pain in his leg. His favorite wife, awoken by his cries, spots a long dark creature squirming along the mud floor of the hut, heading toward the door.
And she knows. Her Maasai warrior has been bitten by a snake, and she must save him, lest he die.
***
I was never scared of snakes as a child. Raised mainly in suburban North America, snake bites were not foremost on our minds.
Nor were snakes foremost on my mind when I first went to Africa. Though I probably should have, I didn’t really equate Africa with the danger of being bitten by a snake.
That all changed when I arrived on the farm in Zimbabwe.
“Make lots of noise when you walk outside,” advised my boss’ wife. “And if you get bit, stay calm and try not to move. If you can, try to identify the snake. And then get yourself to the clinic as soon as possible.”
This was advice given to me in complete seriousness on one of my first days on the farm.
Her son – my student – elucidated. “The Black Mamba can kill you. She is the most dangerous snake in the world. If you get bit, you’re a dead woman.”
“Thanks for that,” I muttered with more humor than I felt.
For a few days, I wondered if the risk of snakes on the farm was as great as my employers had indicated. I convinced myself that they were exaggerating, enjoying instilling fear into their new-arrival.
And then the incidents started happening. I awoke one morning to a dead snake in my living room, skillfully killed by my cats. A few weeks later, a black mamba was discovered in my employers’ kitchen and beaten to death by the chef. Around the same time, when I was horseback riding, my horse almost stepped on a green mamba on the road, and that very day, a boomslang was killed in my neighbors’ yard.
It seemed that snakes were, in fact, a great risk on the farm.
Indeed, here, in Arusha province, where the Serengeti Plains meet the Maasai Steppe, snakes are an everyday sort of problem.
***
This is Maasai territory. They are everywhere, easy to spot in their bright robes and sparkly jewelry. They are selling tourist trinkets or talking on their cell phones in Arusha town. They are tending their cattle, or hauling materials for the maintenance of their huts in the countryside. As we drive through the province, they walk along the side of the highway, or ride bicycles, or negotiate rides on matatus and tuk-tuks.
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| A young Maasai talking on a cell phone. |
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| A Maasai village on the side of the highway. Round huts made from grass, wood, mud, and cow dung. |
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| An everyday job for the Maasai – tending to precious cattle |
I’ve never seen so many Maasais in my life. It’s an enjoyable drive.
It’s also a strange drive. Strange to see the juxtaposition of this modern highway alongside which these most-traditional people exist. The men carry their rungus (wooden clubs) and their tribal knives. The hairless women don heavy jewelry a-plenty, and wear colored robes according to the status in the community – black means unmarried, royal blue means recently married, and purple or maroon for an older woman.
They just don’t seem like the kind of people you ought to see on the side of a newly-paved highway.
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| Maasai also have goats and donkeys, but they are not as valuable as cows. |
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| Maasai urging their cows to plow the land, which is more and more common as the Maasai lose their nomadic ways. |
This is a patriarchal society that centers around cattle. Boys learn to tend the family cattle at a young age, for when they grow up, they will use cattle to increase their wealth and to buy wives. Each wife must be given her own hut in the man’s compound, and will receive visits from him on a rotational basis. It takes a lot of cows to get a wife, and a lot of wives to get respect.
Cows are the source of the Maasai diet, almost entirely. Raw cow meat, cow milk, and cow’s blood, specifically. The milk and blood are often mixed to create a healthy and delicious Maasai meal (hint of sarcasm on my part here). To harvest the blood, a man will dart a large artery in the neck of the cow and collect 2-3 litres of blood in a calabash before closing up the wound with soil. With barely a blink, the cow continues grazing.
Circumcision is an important ritual in Maasai culture. Young men are taken out into the bush with other same-age boys, and are circumcised one by one. Should a boy make a sound – or even blink – he is dishonored within his community. His weakness (read: lack of machismo) means he cannot wear long feathers with the rest of the newly-circumcised men, and that he can never marry.
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| Trying to negotiate a ride or just having a chat? |
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| A cute Maasai family, wearing the second-favorite Maasai color – blue. |
These facts I learned at the Maasai Cultural Museum, opposite the Meserani Snake Park outside Arusha, where we camped a few nights. The museum consists of life-size models reconstructing the life of the Maasai in the region. Next to the reconstruction of the male circumcision rite is one illustrating female circumcision. The guide notices me staring.
“Female circumcision is illegal in Tanzania,” declares our Maasai guide. “It’s still done occasionally in some Maasai villages, though.” Female circumcision celebrates the woman’s womanhood and gives her the right to be married off. I’ve read that the ritual is still conducted more than our guide willingly admits, but I say nothing.
***
Next to the museum is the snake park itself, exhibiting a dozen or so different species of snakes found in Tanzania, including pythons, many different kinds of cobras, green andblack mambas, a puff adder and a boomslang. Despite my distaste for seeing animals behind glass windows, it was admittedly fascinating to see these creatures up close. It was also creepy, since the risk of meeting one of these in the bush is real, albeit rare.
[Sidenote: At Lake Chala, we walked through a lot of bush. The English chef told us one night that the snakes in that area were not perturbed by loud, heavy footsteps. (I’d hoped that was just a sort of urban legend told to her by the locals to scare the mzungu. Stepping loudly in the bush had always been my defense against snakes, a surefire way not to have problems, I’d told myself.) “Beware,” she advised us, before our trek around the crater rim. I’d trekked with hesitation, and dreamt of black mambas that night.]
Acknowledging the risky relationship between snakes and Maasais in the area, the Snake Park created a free clinic for those who have been bitten by snakes. (Profits from drinks purchased at the bar support the Snake Clinic, so overlanders here can feel free to drink heavily in good conscience!)
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| Women always carry the heavy things… |
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| Close up on the weapons all good Maasai warriors carry around. |
We popped into the clinic for a quick chat with the nurse. There were three Maasais on hospital beds in a small room in the corner. All of them were resting and looking rather ill, and I saw that one of them had a large bandage on his foot.
“We see roughly 1,000 patients per year, most of them for cobra bites,” replied the nurse when I confessed my black mamba dreams. Probably those bitten by the mamba never make it to the hospital, I reflected silently. “Cobras are venomous, but not usually lethal,” she continued, trying to reassure me.
In fact, very few snakes have strong enough venom to kill humans quickly, as long as an antidote is close enough. That’s why this clinic is so important for the community.
“Now is the time of year that we start to get really busy,” said the nurse, in reference to her full hospital beds. “Rainy season is when snakes are everywhere.”
Great.
I learn from the nurse that most of her patients were bitten in bed, rather than while working in the fields, tending to cattle, or collecting water or firewood, as I had thought. Maasai homes don’t have doors, but they are warm and cozy, and snakes – poor things – get cold at night. They snuggle up to the warm human bodies, and when the bodies move – SNAP!
I thank myself for having a door on the Toyota. Especially now that it’s rainy season in Tanzania, which has the highest rate of snake bite mortality in East Africa, according to the International Society on Toxinology Global Snake Initiative. (Sorry Mom!)
***
As we drive onwards from Arusha, I snap copious pictures of the Maasai along the road. Once, early on, a Maasai man spots my camera and begins to loudly berate us from the side of the road. I am thankful, in this moment, for being in a car that can quickly escape, and reminded why I rarely take photos of people. But the Maasai are too exotic and colorful to pass up.
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| These Maasai have the typical thin and tall body structure. More Maasais in the background on the left – they’re just everywhere! |
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| This is the Maasai that caught me taking his photo. Right after I snapped this he got very, very angry with me. |
I continue to photograph, but now more surreptitiously. The Maasai are renowned for demanding large sums of money from tourists for taking their photos. They usually manage to acquire this money – even from unwilling tourists –because they are so aggressive that they intimidate the money right out of your wallet. Their warrior ways are ingrained and haven’t disappeared with the arrival of modern highways.
Yet it appears that, against the snakes on these plains, the warrior instinct of the Maasais isn’t always enough.
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| Maasais also ride bicycles now. note the heavy earrings on the woman. |
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| Mother and child tending to the donkeys. |
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| Negotiating a ride on a tuk-tuk (recently imported from India, where they are now banned). Again, note the heavy earrings. |
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| Maasai women walking along the Arusha – Ngorogoro Highway. In the distance, more red, which means more Maasais! |
To read more blog entries about Tanzania, including a luxurious week on the coast, hiking in the Usambara Mountains, and Spotting Kilimanjaro, click here.
