Snakes in Burkina Faso

Mom and Auntie, you might not want to read this, but I promise it's a funny story! 

If there's one animal that Burkinabé are unanimously terrified of, it's the snake. Truthfully, I've never been very scared of snakes. However, I'm scared of snakes here just because I don't know how to identify them, though the majority are poisonous. For the most part, though, snakes universally behave the same. Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone. It is not common to see snakes, but when they're seen, they're dead. People here are so terrified that they will never let snakes live to go reproduce more of the terrors.

Well, I experienced this firsthand, at my house, in my room. I had just awoken from a nap. Before I got up, I saw the floor move. Now, this isn't the first time I've seen the floor move in my room. There's been a mouse, countless lizards, the furriest caterpillar ever, a terrifying spider and a giant dung beetle. Why was the dung beetle not outside with the donkey? Great question. Anyway, I look to the floor, and to my horror, I see a snake slither from one wall to under the four legs of my stand-up fan. He pokes his head out. Thank goodness he's small. I've never been particularly scared of snakes.  In my experience in California, it's either a harmless striped garder snake in the yard or a terrifying rattlesnake on the trail. However, being small doesn't make the snake less harmful. The baby rattlesnakes of California are potentially more harmful because they don't yet know how to release their fangs, so they inject all of their venom on the first bite. I have no idea if that's the case with the vipers, black mambas, cobras or boomslangs here in Burkina Faso.

The snake is only about a yard from my bed, so, I slowly slip one foot into my flip flop, then the same with the other and tiptoe out of my cement floored room to find a family member. The snake doesn't move at all, even with the loud suction noise characteristic to the opening of my door. I tell my host mom, "There's a snake in my room." She looks at me like I'm using the wrong French word for snake, "Un serpent?" I calmly reply, "Oui, un serpent." She still doesn't believe me and asks, "you saw it?" "Yes, I saw it," I play along. "Un serpent?" she asks again. "Yes, it's in my room, I'll show you!" This time, she decides to play along and follows me to my room.

I don't know the French vocabulary for the parts of a stand-up fan. I don't even know the technical names for the parts in English! So, I use the universal language of gestures to show that the snake is underneath the fan's legs. Well, of course the snake is completely hidden, so she doesn't believe me and asks again, "are you sure you truly saw a snake?" To which I reply, "Yes, I saw a snake!" I throw my hand broom on top of the fan's legs and the snake pokes his head out. I immediately I point to his head, but it's too late, he hides back under the fan once he realizes there's no threat. My host mom decides to go get something longer for us to use to prod the fan. She still doesn't believe me.

She comes back with a tree branch as tall as me. I'm laughing in my head because I have no idea where it came from, though I really need to stop asking that question. Things just appear here in West Africa. My host mom refuses to come in the room, just in case, and prods the base of the fan with the branch. Off slithers the snake with a simultaneous yelp and jump from my host mom. She jumps back as I point to the table he slithers under. "What are you doing? Get out of your room!" She pulls me to the hallway and shuts the door and makes me wait with some random small girl that is at the house for unknown reasons. There was no point to close the door because there's a 3-inch gap between the bottom of the door and the floor, so the snake could come find us if he wanted to. In fact, that's probably the way he'd gotten inside my room in the first place. As we stand in silence, I hear my host mom across the street yelling for reinforcements. I laugh out loud and the girl looks up at me with a straight face and evil eye with the look of, "this is not a laughing matter."

My host mom comes back with her 5+ foot branch of safety and the first strapping young man she could find. Thank goodness my room wasn't in a messy disorderly chaos for this little rendez-vous. I stay in the hallway with the girl while my host mom speaks a mix of rapid French and local language to explain that the snake should be under the table, but possibly elsewhere. He can't find it. He asks her, "are you sure you saw a snake?" I laugh out loud again. He proceeds to move around anything that's touching the floor. After about thirty seconds I hear a yelp from him and my host mom as the snake makes his appearance. I'm ready to hear the sound of the tree branch chopping his head off on my cement floor. But to my amazement, he picks up the snake, takes it outside and kills it there. How kind of you to not kill the snake in my room!

The killing of the snake is its own spectacle. The man has the branch holding the snake in one hand and a branch in another hand to kill it. Well, he whacks the heck out of it, while my mom yells rapid local lang at him. It stops moving, but he continues to hit it. Once he stops, my host mom asks, "are you sure he's dead? Hit him again! Make sure he's dead!" The man just hands her the branch and she starts whacking the heck out of the lifeless snake in the dirt. In the chaos of it all, the donkey keeps staring at me because I'm holding leaves that had fallen off of my host mom's giant branch of safety. I give him the leaves while my host mom finishes her time with the snake. Then it's about a 3-minute spectacle of where to discard the snakes body. There's probably some animist (traditional beliefs) superstition about leaving a dead snake in your courtyard because she makes him finally toss the snake over the fence.

After the ordeal is over, my host mom is still in distress. She takes me to the side of the house to show me that I'm well protected: my window is sealed with metal mosquito netting and there are no cracks. We walk to the back door and look at some of the entry places. The truth is, I'm not really concerned about how he got in the house. They leave their front door open every hour of the day, except for when they're sleeping. He could've been in the house for days. My host mom explains that she's never seen a snake since living here in Léo, which I think has been at least 5 years, if not more. She comes to check on me about ten minutes later and asks if I'll be forever worried because she's very scared of snakes. "No, I'm not worried. Snakes don't scare me." She gives me a quizzical look, but is comforted that I'm not terrified to be in the house. I'm just comforted by how much she worries about me. What a great host family to be with! I'm definitely going to miss them when I leave for my site! But, I now know that if I ever come across a snake, the whole town will come running to help!