The Day of the Python

                               Pa Thaddeus 

One day, after work and just before I was free to go on my usual fishing expedition, I went up a hill near our hut to relieve myself. I heard a strange sound that seemed to be coming closer. I stood up to investigate, even though I hadn’t finished. I was nervous and started running without cleaning myself. Suddenly, I felt something touch my leg. As I tried to see what it was, I glimpsed the tail of what looked like a snake. My older brother, Thaddeus, was standing some distance away. I ran towards him and told him I’d seen a snake. He went up the hill to check and, within a minute, called my father, asking him to come quickly. He said it was a python. I ran down and hid in the hut, peeking through the small entrance to see what they were doing. Though I was far away, I could still hear what they were saying.

After about an hour, I saw Bọda Thaddeus coming down the hill, dragging a snake about 20 feet long behind him. His face was beaming with excitement. He told me it was the biggest snake he had ever seen. He explained with an air of bravery how they managed to kill it, describing in graphic detail how they cornered it in a hole. He said the snake had probably heard my movement and was trying to escape into a hole too small for its size. It got stuck halfway and couldn’t move forward or backward. My father and Bọda Thaddeus tried to pull it out by the tail, but it had gone too deep into the hole. My father decided to dig another hole about two feet away, angling it towards where he thought the snake’s head might be. The hole my father dug eventually connected with the hole the snake was stuck in. When the snake saw the opening, it started to move forward, and Bọda Thaddeus helped by pushing it further in, making it exit through the hole my father had dug. My father stood ready with his cutlass, and as soon as he saw the snake’s head, he killed it and dragged the body out of the hole. After that event, Bọda Thaddeus became my hero. I was proud of what he and my father had accomplished.

We roasted the snake, cut it into pieces, ate some, and took the rest home, which amounted to about three baskets full of roasted snake. I carried one basket on my head. As I neared our house, Bale, the head of the household, was the first to recognise that we had killed a python, known in Yoruba as ajola (big snake), even though I was still some distance away. How he knew, I couldn’t say, but I was stunned when he correctly identified what I was carrying. He hadn’t been with us on the farm, and no one had returned home before me to disclose what had happened. This incident only made him more feared among the youth.

Extracts from Grace and Resilience: A Personal Story of My Life’s Journey.

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