by Robyn Scott
Everything went smoothly until Mum planted sticks in the ground to mark where she wanted the geraniums, passion fruit creepers, and a row of pawpaw trees. For the front of the house, there was fast-growing bougainvillea that would climb over the shade-cloth veranda and eventually cover the ugly asbestos roof.
“Okay,” said Mum. “Why don’t you start digging here and work your way round.”
Matthews didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ah!”
“Tell me,” said Mum, an irritable edge creeping into her voice.
“Ga ke itse.”
“Fine. Well if you don’t want to tell me, it can’t be that bad.”
Matthews picked up his spade. He began to dig, in slow motion, like he was lifting concrete instead of soft dirt and cow dung. He looked miserable.
Mum walked off. “Call me when you’ve finished.”
I waited till she was out ol earshot.
“What’s wrong, Matthews?”
“This is no good,” he said, scowling at the rows of flowers waiting to be planted. “Snakes will come into the house.”
“But we have snake barriers.” The barriers were foot-high pieces of wood, pushed across the doorways when it was too hot to shut the doors, which was most of the time.
“They are no good,” said Matthews, impatiently. “You must not have plants near houses.”
All the huts at Matthews’s cattle post were surrounded by bare, swept earth. Nearly every time we’d passed by, one or two young girls had been swishing a bundle of thin sticks across the immaculate dirt. Maybe he had a point.
“Anyway, I’m not scared of snakes.”
“Ah. You must kill them.”
“Dad says you’re not allowed to kill snakes.”
“Ah! Tst, tst.”
∨ Twenty Chickens for a Saddle ∧
Three
Kissing Snakes
In summer, which seemed to last more than half the year, falling asleep at night was almost impossible. Nor did it become any easier with practice; a year after we arrived, the second summer’s night heat and the tireless mosquitoes were as distracting as they were the first day. We developed a routine.
After Dad had kissed each of us good night – “Sleep tight, mind the scorpions don’t bite” – Mum would lean over for her good-night kiss and then tuck in the mosquito net. With mosquito control, as with food and medicines, Mum and Dad, wherever possible, insisted on natural, nonprocessed, nonsynthetic, chemical-free, additive-free, environmentally friendly alternatives. They refused to use the highly effective but chemical-rich Doom spray, which was a permanent fixture in many Botswana households.
“Pull it tighter, Mum.” If any of the soft folds touched skin, the mozzies just bit you through the net.
“Is that okay?”
“Yip. Can you see any inside?”
“All clear. Want to be sprayed?”
“Yip.”
Then Mum would reach inside with a spray bottle of water, careful not to let in any mozzies, and pump the handle till the fine droplets dampened hot skin and sheets.
“Thanks. Night.”
“Sleep well, darling.”
But then, when the lights were off and Mum had disappeared down the corridor, the mozzies would start whining; closer and closer to my ear, until I knew the piercing whirr was too near to be coming from beyond the net.
Almost always, one would have somehow managed to hide inside, escaping Mum’s notice. Five minutes of trying to squash the mozzie with a book so I didn’t get blood on my hands, and nightie, skin, and sheets would be dry again.
Now it would be far too hot to sleep.
Eventually I’d reach out for the tall glass of water, drink half of it, and dribble the rest down the front of my nightie.
Finally, cool soggy cotton and sleep.
♦
Dad said, “If you drink so much, you’ll wake up with TB.”
Dad meant ‘tight bladder’. He usually meant tuberculosis only when he was talking about his patients.
It was impossible not to drink, though, when you were sleepless with heat.
“Well, if you have to get up, just don’t walk barefoot in the dark. Always turn on the lights.”
But when I woke, moonlight fdled the room. Outside, the sandy expanse between our house and Grandpa Ivor’s ‘was almost glowing, streaked with a few long tree shadows. I could see the nose of the aeroplane poking out of the shed. Grandpa’s house was completely dark. It must have been after eleven, probably already early on Wednesday morning – Dad’s worst clinic day.
At four thirty, just as the first francolins began squawking their dawn good-mornings, Dad and Grandpa would be leaving for the airport. From there, they would fly nearly a hundred kilometres to the clinic in Tonota village, where Dad would see more than a hundred patients. If he returned in time for dinner, he’d eat his food in glazed-eyed, exhausted silence.
Mum and Dad’s door was across the passage from mine. If I turned on the lights, I’d be certain to wake them.
I slid out under the net, tucked it back in, and tiptoed silently past their door. Even in the windowless passage I could see the floor well enough to be certain it was clear.
Against the wall opposite the loo, a woven washing basket overflowed onto the floor with the day’s dirty clothes. I gazed at the basket with half-concentrating, emptying-bladder relief. A T-shirt, a few knickers, and a brown cord had fallen onto the floor – the tie from Mum’s dressing gown, maybe a belt. I couldn’t decide which.
I stopped weeing, midway, seized up with fright.
The cord had moved. And now I realised it had a head, at the end nearest my toes.
“Mum! Dad!” I yelled, snatching my feet up beside me onto the seat.
A faraway, sleepy grunt. And then, “Keith. Come on. Get up.”
“What’s wrong?” called Dad, in a muffled, grumpy voice.
“A snake! Come quick.”
Footsteps padded down the brown-papered corridor, and the door handle started to turn.
“Wait.” I closed my legs together and tried to pull my nightie over my knees.
“Remember not to move,” said Dad, from behind the door. “Or you’ll frighten it.”
“You’re going to be fine,” added Mum, in a soothing but wobbly voice.
Very slowly, the bathroom door swung open, and Mum and Dad appeared in the doorway.
“Interesting,” said Dad, peering down at the snake. His hair was standing up in several directions. He wore only pyjama shorts. Mum, who didn’t wear anything to bed, stood stark naked beside him. Her skin looked surprisingly white in the moonlight.
“Haven’t seen one of these before,” said Dad.
He flicked on the light, and the snake began to slither towards the base of the loo.
“Aaah, Dad.”
“Relax, Robbie.” Dad scratched his chin thoughtfully. “It’s small. Definitely not a cobra, so it probably won’t rear. Would you mind getting me a broom, Lin?” he added, as if he was asking Mum to pass him the salt.
A minute later, by which time the snake had slithered against the porcelain base of the loo, Mum, now wrapped in a dressing gown, returned with the broom. Lulu and Damien came trailing after her, woken by the din from the kitchen, where our new bull terrier, Smiley, had started howling excitedly and hurling himself against the rickety wooden door.
Damien began to giggle.
“It’s not funny.” I glared at him from my undignified perch. I felt sick with fear. I wondered if any of the bottles of antive-nom that Dad kept in the cheese compartment in the fridge would work for this snake, whatever it was.
Dad held the end of the broom handle and, very slowly, lowered the brush end just behind the snake’s arrow-patterned head. Then, with a quick flick of his arm, he slapped the broom down onto the neck. The snake thrashed wildly, but its head was held securely still. Dad swept it into the middle of the room.
“Okay, off you go.”
>
I slid off the seat. “Should I flush?”
“If you widdled.”
I pumped the handle a few times, washed my hands under the lukewarm water from the cold tap, and retreated to the passage.
It took several minutes – Dad pinning down the angry, wriggling snake; Mum, sitting on the edge of the bath, flicking through the already well-worn snake book – to identify this latest intruder.
“Nightadder. Semipoidonouj.”
Which meant we couldn’t just drop it out of the window into the flowerbed, or keep it for a few weeks in the glass vivarium, like we sometimes did with harmless snakes.
Instead, Mum and Dad slipped an empty burlap sack over its head, pushing the body in afterwards. Then they put the wriggling sack into a cardboard box. On top of that went a tea tray; on top of that, Palgrave’s Treed of Southern Africa. Finally, Mum punched air holes in the side of the box with a pair of scissors.
In the morning we’d drive far out into the bush, looking for somewhere with no cows or goats or donkeys, and tip the night adder over the back of the bakkie. Till then it would spend the rest of the night on the moonlit dining room table.
“Well done for being so brave and not moving’,” said Dad, giving my shoulder a squeeze.
I didn’t point out that the first thing I’d done when I’d seen the snake, contrary to all Dad’s warnings, was to move quickly.
“I wasn’t really that scared.”
“Well, it was only semi poisonous, anyway,” said Damien. “Couldn’t have killed you.”
And that was all that mattered, really – especially when there were so many snakes that could.
Mostly, we saw only bits and flashes of snakes; a brown shadow slithering through a leafy branch, the flick of a dark tail disappearing into a clump of grass, even just telltale diagonal whip marks in the sand. Not usually enough to make an identification. But enough to let you assume the worst.
“Definitely a mamba.”
“Black Mamba: Neurotoxic venom; front-fanged, do it can dink itd fangd into any part of the body, can ra’ue itd body two metres tail, i.e., can bite you anywhere.” Rules for black mamba bites: Breathing may be paralysed in minutes. Give mouth-to-mouth; keeps victim alive indefinitely. Otherwise need antivenom within an hour, or death. N.B. If bite to neck, poison will spread too quickly for any hope of survival. Tickets! Game over!
“No, man. Too skinny. Maybe a boomslang.”
“Boonulang: Haemotoxic venom: back-fanged, so needs to get Ltd jaws around a finger to get its venom into you.” Unlikely, but horrible. Venom interferes with blood clotting system; victim may die of internal bleeding. Rules for bites: you have a few hours’ grace, but then, tickets. Get in car! Get on plane! Cross borders! Do anything, pay anything, to get antivenom.
“Too dark. Probably a Mozambique.”
“Mozambique Spitting Cobra: Cytotoxic venom, which can cause terrible local tissue damage around a bite. Usually spits in direction of eyes, can caiue blindness. Spitting range, two metres.” Rules for spit in eyes: Wash eyes immediately in water. N.B .: Legs often spat at first – if you feel unexplained droplets on leg when walking past flowerbed, retreat immediately and put on big sunglasses before investigating further.
These inconclusive sightings occurred most often on our evening walks: every day, six o’clock excursions along one of the sandy roads or paths that spread out like a network ol large and little veins from the perimeter fence. With the glowing evening sun in our eyes and the messy patchwork of shadows across the sand, it was almost impossible to tell what any fleeting movement might have been.
After-wards, when we’d all walked far off the path to skirt the suspicious tree or bush – dragging a wriggling, howling Smiley who invariably tried to chase ‘whatever it was – Mum and Dad would try to moderate our speculation.
“Could have been a mole snake. Maybe even just a big lizard…” And then, as a tirade of barks drowned their voices, “For God’s sake, Smiley. Shut up! Enough now.”
Christened for his toothy grinning jaw, the bizarre dog had entered the family six months after we arrived in Botswana. He replaced our first dog, Fawn, a chronically ill doelike mongrel that I’d insisted on taking home from an animal rescue centre – only for her to die a few months later. Fawn had seemed to suffer as much from a broken heart as illness. Smiley suffered from a broken mind, rescued from some grim past by a cousin of Dad’s who’d spotted the scarred white bull terrier wandering beside a motorway in Johannesburg.
Dad, who loved bull terriers above all other breeds, offered a home immediately, and Grandpa Ivor collected Smiley when he next flew down to Johannesburg. Smiley climbed onto Granny Betty’s lap, where, despite having received three times the normal dose of tranquiliser, he fidgeted the entire flight back to Selebi. A few weeks later, when we left him alone for the first time, we returned to find the whole lounge suite torn to pieces, and Smiley, slobbering over a sea of foam on the brown paper tiles, glaring accusingly through red piggy-eyes.
As we argued about the snake sightings, Smiley would be howling dementedly.
“Listen to Smiley. Must be a mamba.”
“Smiley barks at geckos.”
“But dogs know about snakes. And Smiley’s going crazy.”
“Smiley went crazy long ago.”
This became increasingly hard to dispute. Nor did Smiley demonstrate much evidence of the acute snake sense – sometimes even including a special bark – developed by so many African dogs. Smiley energetically and indiscriminately chased everything that moved, once chewing right through a fallen knob-thorn trunk in pursuit of a two-inch lizard.
But as the trees and bushes darkened under the blue-black dusk sky, and the owls screeched to each other as they began their nighttime hunt, the bush’s unseen inhabitants loomed larger and more definitely poisonous. By the time we saw the dark smudge of trees ahead of us – the knob-thorn cluster around our house – and hurried towards it in the last of the light, the matter was usually resolved in favour of something lethal. And then we would sit down to dinner on the veranda, Smiley contentedly snapping at flying insects, listening to the cries, squeals, and rustles in the blackness around us, and relishing the chilling satisfaction of a near miss from the relative safety of our little house.
Only one of Dad’s five clinics, his base clinic in Phikwe, had a telephone.
His others, Dr. Meyer’s old clinics in the faraway villages of Tonota, Machaneng, Tsetsebjwe, and Lesenepole, were tiny buildings with no ceiling boards beneath their corrugated iron roofs, no electricity, and no running water. At these clinics, which he visited only one day each week, Dad sterilised his instruments using gas power, and washed his hands in bowls of water filled by his nurses under outdoor taps.
But with many hour-long queues of patients waiting, even in the relative luxury of the Phikwe clinic, Dad almost never stopped working to chat on the telephone.
So when, one sluggish morning in our second summer in Botswana, he rang from work, we didn’t doubt that we were being summoned for something worth-while.
“I’ve got a patient here you guys might like to see.”
“Who?”
“You’ll have to come along to the clinic.”
“Why? Dad – ”
But the phone had gone dead.
Mum was, as usual, game for any diversion from the routine of our school day, which had very little routine in the first place.
Mum had decided to homeschool us partly because we lived out of town in Selebi, and would one day – if Dad ever found his longed-for game farm deep in the bush – live even further away. But she’d first started teaching us at home in New Zealand, where we’d lived near several good schools, and the main reason was, and had always been, that Mum’s particular version of homeschooling fitted her ‘firm educational philosophy’. Which was that learning is most effective when there are no clear distinctions between work and play. Routine threatened the sacredly blurred line, so she avoided it as much as
possible.
Now she said, “Of course we must go. Hurry up. Put your shoes on.”
Phikwe was the only clinic that we could possibly visit in anything less than a day-long expedition. The others, in remote villages hundreds of kilometres of bad dirt roads away, could be reached easily only by aeroplane. Once we’d flown with Dad to Lesenepole, at the base of the beautiful Tswapong hills, sinking towards a tiny dirt airstrip beside the village. Goats and donkeys wandered across the runway, and Dad circled low over the strip to scatter the animals. A few goats remained, but by the time we looped round a second time, a figure was running beneath us, waving a stick at the stragglers. The elderly man, the self-appointed aeroplane-guard, met us with a warm ‘Dumela’ as we climbed out onto the dirt. Then he set to ‘work, shooing away scores of small children who clambered onto the plane while Dad loaded his medicine trunk into an old bakkie sent to take him to the clinic and we hurried off to explore the village with Mum.
Normally, Phikwe was the clinic we least associated with great excitement, and we speculated wildly as the bakkie sped off down the driveway, clinking quickly over the cattle grid. From Selebi, Phikwe was a fifteen-minute drive, on a mostly smooth, mostly tar road. For the first part of the drive, the road ran parallel to the railway track; then, after a few kilometres, the track diverged and headed off into the bush towards the orange-and-white-striped smelter tower that plumed sulphurous black smoke in the distance.
The road continued into the residential part of town, and to reach Dad’s clinic we drove between the baking grounds of the tennis and cricket clubs on one side and the row of mine managers’ houses on the other. Behind the hedges of these large tree-shaded homes revolving sprinklers tick-tick-ticked endlessly, fighting their constant battle with the withering sun – preserving, against all odds, absurdly green lawns and the delicate flowers of English gardens.
But these bright clean houses and lush green gardens made only a brief oasis. Not much further on, in the poorer, ‘blacker’ part of town, dust and heat reasserted themselves.
