‘HUNGER FORCED ME TO HUNT SNAKES FOR FOOD’

KWENE – Sometimes, desperate times do call for desperate measures.

This old English saying held true for a 74-year-old retired civil servant who told the Eswatini News that hunger drove him to hunt deadly snakes like black mamba as a source of food. Abandoned, the plight of this elderly man has attracted the attention of many. He is not afraid to confess that he not only lives with these reptiles at the bushy place he calls home, but has developed the courage to face nature’s harsh elements.

In happier times, this man used to have a decent job working for the Ministry of Public Works as a plumber and had a wife along with two daughters. Life was good and hunger was not an issue, but all that has changed into great misfortune for this man. He lost his wife, who according to residents, allegedly had mental challenges and stayed with him before her untimely death.

The death of his wife gave birth to serious life challenges for the man, who was not only fingered for the woman’s death, but was deserted by his only two daughters who are believed to be living somewhere in Matsapha. According to the man, the daughters have not checked on him since their mother passed away. The elderly man recounted the trauma he went through when he was detained and questioned by police over his wife’s death. He alleged to have spent a night in a police holding cell before he was allegedly set free as there was allegedly no evidence linking him to his wife’s death.

Suffering

Just by mere look, it does not require a rocket scientist to detect that this man is suffering badly and struggling to make ends meet. He said he has no one to turn to as his family has not been checking on him and his closest ‘friends’, as he calls them, are now snakes and rats said to be freely roaming around the place.

The elderly man alleged that a black mamba was a permanent resident in one of the stick-and-mud houses that were built for him by good Samaritans, but collapsed due to harsh weather conditions. As a result, for some years, he was forced to sleep in a dilapidated room that resembled a chicken shed, not fit for human habitation. According to the man, snakes invaded this room daily, especially at night.

“The snakes are my friends now, I just watch them move freely around this place. There was a point where I started to devise a plan on how to hunt them just to have something I could eat because I had nothing. For me, snakes now are no different to chicken meat,” the old man said.

The elderly man further claimed to have caught a tortoise, which he wanted to eat but ended up selling it for E120 just to buy some foodstuff. “When you are hungry, you eat everything that you come across. I caught the tortoise, but someone offered to buy it in exchange for money and I accepted the offer,” he said. Many snake experts have cited the black mamba and the coastal taipan as the world’s most dangerous snakes, albeit not the most venomous snakes. Both species are elapids, and in several aspects of morphology, ecology and behaviour, the coastal taipan is strongly convergent with the black mamba.

Source

Research has shown that the snakes enter homes at night because they are looking for a heat source. The warmest source in the house is likely to be the bed because of human body heat. It is stated that the bite will no doubt occur due to the snake feeling threatened when the sleeping person moves on or near it. Statistics also show that most snakebites happen in rural areas as the assumption is that these are low-income areas, where the bed is likely to be low to the ground (or on the ground) and likely the only heat source in the building.

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