from bullets to bazookas

the primitive hunt

"The people which sat in darkness..." This has been the third day of darkness. The generator has been giving us problems and we've had no power for three days. The battery on my phone has died. One laptop battery died, and I am using the second one. Hopefully, tonight we can get it to work. We found a guy to come over, take a look at it and service it. Dry season is not here yet and it is already terribly hot. At night, the darkness makes it all the more agitating.

Yesterday afternoon, my reading was interrupted by loud noise and stone throwing by some of the neighbours. I thought it had been another neighbourly scrimmage. I had witnessed two of these in the past two days. One of them involved some flying fists among women. The other, between and woman and a man was handled a bit more decently. The woman screamed and cursed the mans mother and family while the man kept his cool and retorted in a low voice. I rushed to the back to see what was going on and saw a crowd gathering around a tree, looking up screaming and yelling. Amid the barrage of stones raining down, I quickly walked over and asked what was going on. "Snake Sah!" one woman screamed out as she ran away from the site. There was a man atop the tree chopping down branches, and setting fire to some. The crowd gathered around yielding sticks and stones. Some called out to him to chop off this branch, another group asked to chop the other branch. One young practical joker yelled that the snake had jumped over to the adjacent coconut tree. The others rebuked him and a fight almost broke out. The man nearly felled the whole tree branch by branch and was getting to some of the last thick branches when a few members of the crowd sighted the snake once again on that thick branch. The man atop was encouraged to chop that branch while the men below stood ready and determined to kill this snake. He had to step on the burning branch in order to get to this thick branch. Soon enough the branch was chopped and hung from the tree, but there was no movement in the leaves. The man came down slowly and began chopping the surrounding branches that held up the thick hanging branch. The branch soon fell to the ground and the cluster of man ran towards the branch, just a few feet away from me, and began violently beating the snake which nearly escaped. It was what the locals called a Kare; a yellow-green venomous snake that springs from tree to tree. This particular one was about 3ft long and was according the man who finally claimed the carcass, 44 years of age. He calculated this by counting the rings along the body of the snake. After the men had beaten the snake to death, one of them ran with it hanging off the end off his stick, waving the carcass in the air, as if in some sort of ritual. He then ran back with it and flung it over my shoulder towards the group of women who stood behind me watching. They all ran screaming. One slender, young woman began to cry and scream. They then placed the neck of the snake against the root of another tree and beat the neck still it fell off. He then ran with it and placed it straight on the floor. As I got ready to take a picture, he grabbed it and began to head off with it but the crowd stopped him and asked him to pose the snake for me to snap a picture of it. After about two pictures, the man who climbed the tree came by and grabbed the snake. He stretched the snake out along his outstretched arms and posed for me to take a picture. He then went off happy for his dinner that night.

It has been a long time since I listened to BBC. Here in the house, I cannot pick up any radio stations on my cd player, and I get no reception on my mobile either. I invested in a small radio that can tune into Short Wave frequencies. It cost Le15000. I can pick up BBC on it.

posted by bthomas24 @ 1:45 PM