….Nambou, there are BATS… ON….
THE…. GROUND!! Let’s go pick them up before the Uncles get them.”
So spoke Nambou (the
lab tech), riding up on his motor cycle, to Nambou (the volunteer, aka Shaving
4) as we walked home from getting a coke & checking on the tailor’s
progress on Mrs. Sawed-off’s new local fashions.
[Technical note: all
village second sons are Nambou which leads to “uncles” being numerous]
Nambou’s (the lab
tech) excitement was not out of the blue as about 50 yards down the road a
large tree had been felled (power company cutting trees along the road for the
rumored coming of electricity to Bitchabe) with a flock (?) of fruit bats
circling above it. What did not compute was a) why one would want to pick up
fruit bats and b) what were some doing on the ground in any event?
Shortly after Nambou’s
(the lab tech) call to action we passed two kids carrying about four bats each.
This indicated the wide spread enthusiasm for the fruit bats (to eat) and that
they were on the ground seemed a more parsimonious explanation of two 7 year
olds with eight bats between them than the only alternative; the kids could
fly. [But then again…“Africa has many mysteries” (Wadja)]
This was not the last
time non-bird flying food came up. Yao, our excellent driver while in Lomé, on
our night time run to the airport said that the largish insects flying around
the street lights were good to eat. Mrs. Sawed-off ask what they tasted like
–[I know what you’re thinking…WRONG] –Yao said crickets; mole crickets to be
exact. And his description of the local mole cricket matched exactly the mole
cricket from around these parts.
When first assigned
to Africa, the Peace Corp said there was no dangerous wildlife in Togo….except
the snakes. Without going laundry list, the western green mamba (some deaths in
the 30 minute range) and the African rock python (including the ingestion of a
few people) come to mind. That theses players are not merely rumored is the
Peace Corp volunteer that got clipped by a small green mamba on the ground at night (go figure) who
recalled hallucinating on the ride to the antivenin. She lived. Then there was
the volunteer (I met this guy) who shortly after his arrival saw an African
rock python eating a goat.
The Togolese are
surprisingly matter of fact about snakes despite, perhaps because of, their
proximity to some very serious players. They are not oblivious to the problem
as Shaving 4 relayed an early rhyme he heard; “First you cry, then you die”.
However there is none of the over-the-top apprehension one encounters in
America. As example, we were visiting a coffee grower (Kodjo) in the hills
above Kpalima. We took a short walk down hill and then back up. On the return,
Yao reaches down and picked up the tail end of a recently shed snake skin lying
on top of a bush about 18 inches off the ground; nobody spotted the skin when
we first passed the spot about 10 minutes earlier. Yao was of the opinion that
it was the shed of a green mamba. What he did next was reach up and shake the
end of a couple of tree limbs within reach; the purpose being clearly to get
whoever left the skin moving so we could see it. As I said, the Togolese are matter of fact
about their snakes.
Along with being
matter of fact about snakes Bitchabeians are knowledgeable on some details. In
listening it became clear they were making a distinction between “python” and
“boa”. I was more interested in exactly what they were referring to than
delivering a suspect taxonomic point of ‘no boas in Africa’. Mrs Sawed-off
conducted several cross cultural interviews but I took this opportunity to toss
in a question of. …How long is a “python” and how long is a “boa”. Kokou (who
it turns out was the one who came up with the questions for the internet) said
the “python” was about one meter. Nambou (the lab tech) added may be up to 1.5
meters. The “boa” was up to 21 feet, but not so common. This pretty much sealed
the “python” as a ball python and their “boa” as the African rock python.
Though more or less
surrounded by deadly mambas and human eating boa/pythons for ten days, the
point of my greatest concern came upon arrival when you turn in those one page
forms to customs regarding where you’re from, why you’re here, any weird stuff
with you? The guy takes one look at what I handed him and tells me it is “offensive”. Now, in my wild and crazy
youth (see next week), I am not above giving “offense” to bureaucrats. HOWEVER,
being so far from home and having Shaving 4 on the other side of the security
zone giving “offense” was THE LAST THING I WISHED TO DO!!
It turned out that
the problem was I had filled the form out in pencil which was not proper. Live
& learn.
ML
4/8/14
