Asisiriwa Day 5
11 November 2015
Here’s a white-throated bee-eater returning to its perch with a moth it caught in midair.
I think when you live near animals, you begin to think more of death. Life seems a little less precious to you, and you start to realize, the way you started to as a child, that death is always forgotten and always just a moment away. Animals don’t think of death, which may be why I think of it more. I see their fates long before they do, and I feel a little cursed because of it. Even at the moment of their death, animals do not look at Death’s face staring at them, but past it, behind it, at the retreating back of Life. That is what seems to be in an animal’s eyes when they die. And perhaps it’s the same for people, at the very moment of death. But we are cursed to bear the knowledge that, eventually, we will teeter over the precipice of life’s fleeting and ultimately beautiful end, and fall headlong into the unknown. We fight and struggle desperately, but we know (or think we know) what awaits us. It is a battle that cannot be won. Animals do not know this, so they keep fighting past the point of surrender–fight with their bodies or their eyes to catch and keep the life they see escaping them, rather than acknowledging the death that looms, coming to release them into the blind oblivion of some interminable night.
Last night I saw death. And it was twofold because the death I witnessed might have saved me from my own, or another’s. It gave death a weightiness, a further inevitability, as if struck into stone: when death comes for someone, someone must go with him.
It was dark, and we were walking back to the house, which is situated just outside the village on the main road, though which direction is impossible for me to gauge. It is on the opposite end of town from the literacy center, and from Quist’s house, which is where we were coming from. On that road, taxis and tro-tros swerve and tilt at ludicrous speeds, so we listened hard for their approach even as we talked and joked, swinging our flashlights with deliberate jauntiness, cautiously acknowledging the danger of night. We hugged the shoulder. We walked quickly.
Another western green mamba, just like the one we saw that night, but we let this one go into the bush.
But it wasn’t an unruly taxi that stopped us and demanded our attention; it was a tiny snake, swamp-colored and innocuous, silently inching his way across the road and into the undergrowth at the edge of the pavement. Brady and I crouched to watch its progress, so small and fine, so seemingly weightless that when it wriggled itself into the low branches of a road shrub, the wispy limbs already overladen with thick, ripe leaves didn’t move. It was at home among that foliage, unabashed by the bright LED bulbs of our flashlights. I felt a small sense of wonder watching it, knowing suddenly that the trees and bushes could be full of these delicate creatures, made entirely of skulls and spines and scales, writhing in their spaghetti dances as I slept. It made me feel surprisingly at ease. I felt less alone.
We continued. Brady and Quist talked and I bore the burden of remembering to listen for taxis. Soon we rounded the corner onto the semi-hidden driveway up to the house (which seems more and more stately the longer I am in Ghana). We swung our flashlights and spoke louder for a different reason: to slowly introduce our guard and housemate, Acheampong, to our arrival. Acheampong insists on sitting in a plastic chair to guard the house at night, which would not require a slow introduction except that he does so with his hunting rifle. The rifle itself is old, but alarmingly true, as evidenced by his daily return from “the bush” with dead animals in tow. I make it a point to never startle an armed man.
I hailed him as we approached, and saw his wave from beneath a tree hung low with leaves. Suddenly, Quist grabbed my arm and pulled me back, emitting a sharp sound of alarm. I slowly backed away, thinking he was worried about Acheampong’s gun, when he began motioning to the ground. Another snake, larger than the previous, was making its slow way toward the trees at the edge of the gravel driveway. Its path was uneven, rocky, overgrown. Quist motioned for Acheampong to come, and spotlighted the snake with his flashlight, all the while explaining that these tiny snakes are extremely venomous, willing to bite at the hapless ankles of passersby, sinking their tiny fangs into the skin and flooding their blood with poison. I wanted to look away when I saw Acheampong with his gun, but he did not attempt to shoot the snake as an American would have. He watched it like a fisherman, butt of the rifle aimed down, waiting to strike the death blow. And, like a fisherman, he was not immediately successful. With each strike at the snake, Quist provided more information.
“They are very venomous” –STRIKE– “They come out at night to hunt” –STRIKE– “Their bite can kill you” –STRIKE– “One hour” –STRIKE– “See how it bites” –STRIKE– “A woman in town has herbs to suck out the poison” –STRIKE– “If you are bitten, go to her” –STRIKE.
This is a huntsman spider eating another spider in our house.
It writhed. I wasn’t sure if it still lived or if stray neurons simply continued to fire instinctually to twitch, to squirm, to chase the life that had left. I was sorry to see it die, but death had to be appeased. I was conscious of my feet, unprotected in my rubber flipflops, as Brady suggested perhaps it was a viper, as Quist was unsure of the name.
We bid each other goodnight at the steps to the veranda, and Brady and I went inside the house.
“When we’re done here,” Brady said, shutting the door and turning into the house, where the tile was freckled by tiny gnats, “nothing will faze us.”
I nodded, wondering if the snake was still worming its way into death.
—
This morning it is gone. I wonder if Acheampong ate it, or if he took it to the woman in town with the herbs, or if it survived and slunk off scarred and concussed. I wash the dishes and clean up breakfast. Today I am not thinking of death, but of houses with walls and doors and windows. Cracked houses and empty houses. Perhaps that is all death is–a house suddenly unlocked, where you can go to retire and rest for a while during the heat of the day.
But I am not thinking of death today.
