The Green Mamba Bheka Pierce   © Copyright 2025 by Bheka Pierce

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Not much later, in total darkness but for the headlights, we forded a river, the water up to the wheel rims, and came up the dirt road, past a church made with adobe bricks, to a cement block-and-corrugated-iron-roofed house with candles lit in the two front windows.

Although it was now after 8:00, Maseko, our headmaster, in a three-piece suit, was there to greet us, shaking our hands, thanking us for coming from across the great waters to help the children of this remote valley learn about the wider world.

After getting our trunks down, after saying good-bye to our director, after watching the red tail-lights of the Land Rover grow smaller and disappear, Maseko, carrying a flashlight—or as it was called in British English a torch--took us in for a tour of our house. The living room had a fireplace which would come in handy in the cold months of July and August. The kitchen had a kerosene stove and fridge, and a stainless-steel sink, but unfortunately no water yet. We would fetch our water from the school’s large tank that filled with roof water during the rainy season in the spring. Pointing his torch out the window, he indicated a two-seater outhouse. In each of the two bedrooms stood a single bed made up with sheets, blankets and two pillows. On each night table was a candle in a Coke bottle, and a box of matches.

After I thanked him for giving us such a warm welcome, he said he would come at 11:00 the next morning, after the church service, to take us on a tour of the school and explain what would happen at school at 8:00 the following morning, Monday, January 6^th, which we must know was the Day of the Epiphany.

Lying in my new bed, awaiting sleep, thirty miles from the nearest store, post office, automobile, and telephone, not to mention a hospital in case my appendix decided to burst on a morning the once-a-day bus was running, I should have had sense enough to feel at least some nervousness.

I should have felt downright anxious about Monday morning. Back at our training in Louisiana, Alex, who was to teach science, and I English, had had three weeks of practice teaching, just about enough to make me aware of how much I didn’t know. And yet somehow we would have to get our tenth graders prepared for the Junior Certificate Exam sent out from England in December.

But all I felt at that wakeful moment was excitement and anticipation. After all, I was all of twenty-two. I had my toothbrush, three changes of underwear, my dog-eared copy of Huck Finn, my high school graduation pen, and my trusty Swiss army knife. What more did I need?

   Not much after a dozen roosters in the kraals around the valley have announced dawn’s arrival, I hear someone shouting, “Inyoka! Inyoka!” Snake! Snake!

Getting up to look out the window, I see several people over by what must be the cement-block schoolhouse. None of them is standing near the building. More people arrive, a mix of girls and boys and adults, some in traditional dress, some in western attire. Many are pointing toward a plot of marigolds inside a rock border at the far end of the building.

By the time Alex and I get there, the crowd has grown to thirty, some looking like church goers, everyone standing well back from the marigold patch. Alex points to what looks like nothing more than six feet of green garden hose. “Perfect!” he exclaims. “I’m going to catch it. Just what I need for my first lesson.”

“Are you nuts?” I ask. “You miss the session we had about the seven types of deadly snakes here?” Our doctor had briefed us on all seven, including not only the black mamba, whose venom kills in under five minutes, but also the green mamba’s, which takes up to a half hour of excruciating pain, but still gets the job done.

“No worries,” he says, moving sideways to approach from the right the mamba, which has now raised its upper body a foot or so up against the pale green wall.

What to do? Tackle my colleague, who’s spent the summer as a lumberjack and has shoulders like a lineman? He is already a lot closer to the snake than I want to be. Instead, I pick up three stones, two golf-ball sized, one flat. Moving to a spot roughly sixty feet six inches from the snake, I go into a full wind-up, and fire the first of the round stones.

It hits the wall about two inches to the left of where the snake’s head joins its body. Alex, who has gone into something like a Groucho-Marx crouch, is not happy. “Cut it out!” he shouts.

The snake, definitely not happy, rises another foot against the wall. Our doctor had told us they do that the better to strike their prey in the chest, which works faster than biting an ankle.

I adjust, go into another full wind-up, and fire the second round stone, which hits the wall two inches to the right of where the snake’s head joins its body. A great shout goes up from the crowd behind me. A boy near me shouts, “Hawu, sorry, sir, you were coming very close this time.” Hawu, I knew, was the Swazi equivalent of Holy smokes!

  Growing up, I’d failed to make the Little League and school teams. Instead, I’d spent hours and hours throwing a rubber-coated baseball against my neighbor’s brick steps. I could make the ball come back as a grounder or a fly to my right or left. I had elaborate games depending on when the cars came up the road, and I had to make the play before they got there. Drivers would roll down their windows as they went by, grin, and tell me they were safe by a mile.

Countless times, waiting for the next car, it became the bottom of the ninth inning of the World Series, bases loaded, two outs, our team up by a run, and the manager sending the cart down to get me to come strike out the next batter. Even back then, I could feel my stomach tingle.

    But this is for real.

Alex looks about to make a grab for the snake.

The stone in my hand is flat and sharply edged. Which means it will curve.

Since there is now not a second to spare, the hell with the wind-up. Holding the stone between my thumb and index finger, I cock back my arm, aim a foot to the right of the snake, and fire it off, a big roundhouse curve that—mirabile dictu!--catches the snake just where its head joins its body.

There is a moment of absolute silence, Alex staring balefully at me, and then such a roar goes up, some applause, and one of my as-yet-unmet colleagues shouting, “Hawu, this tall one has the power!”

The snake, now writhing among the marigolds, might still reflexively bite any overly enthusiastic science teacher that came near, but two of our as-yet-unmet students bravely get Alex by the elbows and restrain him.

   Once things quiet down, once a long-handled rake and shovel has been fetched to pick up and bury the snake, Maseko takes us on the tour of the school, Alex scowling, saying not a word to me.

Later, towards evening, Maseko returns, with two white-haired men in the traditional dress of leather, feathers, and African cloths, “Magwaza,” he says, which is the Swazi word for pierce or stab, “I think you must know I am living in two worlds, so I am bringing from our valley these two elders who have come to tell me they are wishing to help you. They want to put special muti, medicine, around the corners of your house so that the mate of the snake cannot come inside to fetch you.”

“Of course,” I say, as we all shake hands, “please thank them from me for this favor.” We accompany them around the four corners of the house where they empty the contents of four small bags and cover the contents with what look like pumpkin leaves.

“How long will it last?” I ask Maseko who asks them.

“Two years,” he says.

  My two years at the school seemed more like two weeks. Alex went home after three months, saying he wasn’t cut-out to be a teacher. I discovered I loved teaching, and—thanks to my students patiently teaching me how to teach them—I got good enough at it in time for all my tenth-grade students to pass the J.C. Exams.

  During my once-a-month trips for provisions to the town thirty miles up the mountain road, I had the failed Little Leaguer’s pleasure of hearing more than once someone saying to someone else, “This one, this tall one, he is the one beating the mamba with the stone from far away.”

  Am I correct in suspecting that you want to know if the snake’s mate showed up to fetch me during those two years? She did not. It was not until two years and two days that I-- coming along the path to my house--was lucky enough to notice curled around a porch rafter over my front door what looked like nothing so much as six feet or so of green garden hose.

  But that snake saga I’ll save for another time.