SNAKES ALIVE!

I remember as a youth sitting around a campfire while someone one told exciting stories of camping in the woods. If you would like to have a lively time of snakey stories, get your African class to telling you their experiences with snakes. I even have a couple of my own. Of course mine are not as animated as theirs. They firmly believe that Satan still comes in the form of a snake, particularly a python, and that he can slip up on you and you can not see him even if you are looking right at him. That is one reason they sweep a clear area around their traditional homes.

Of course Africa has many varieties of snales, and most of them are deadly poisonous, including cobras, ringhals, spitting cobras which have a black ring around their necks, mambas, both black and green varieties, boom-slungs, moccasins, and adders, Probably the most feared are the mambas and the cobras, as their poison acts on the nervous system and so rapidly that often it is too late to get help. The adder is slower acting, more like an American rattlesnake, but with no rattles. Our daughter stepped on one of those once but it missed her when she leaped aside.

I remember four meetings. Twice with a mamba, once with an adder, and once with a house snake, a harmless small snake that likes to inhabit houses. My wife has never forgiven me for the fact that one evening as I was reading on the couch, she spied a snake in the house and shouted "snake!" My first reaction was to pull my feet up onto the couch and ask where? When she told me where, we spied a tiny foot long little house snake that had slithered behind under the door and hidden under the piano. Using a broom, we quite literally swept it back out the door.

Since the country Africans often live in mud huts with thatched roofs and no ceilings, and may sleep on a mat on the floor, I well understand their fear of the creatures. Twice on our visits to Natal, a sub-tropical province on the South Coast of Africa, I encountered mambas. They are long thin snakes that can move extremely rapidly, and they are deadly poisonous. I had decided to go down to the beach on one occasion and the path led through a thicket that was shoulder high. I heard a snake fleeing from me as my footsteps approached. I was relieved that he fled. They usually do. The other time we were using a large mud hut for church services. It was totally empty, and had no windows and only one opening for a door, perhaps five feet high. We had no more settled when someone noticed that there was a mamba in the thatch above the door that we had just used to enter, and the only way out. We could only wait for him to move away deep into the thatch somewhere else before we could even consider leaving.

My brush with an adder was not so disturbing. Phyllis and I had decided to climb the trail to the top of the Golden Gate, a gold-colored rocky cliff that towers above a National Park camp site. About half way up, I saw an adder hiding under one of the rocks that made up the steps of the steep parts of the climb. You can be sure that we were cautious when we returned that path on the way back down later. From that time on, we were especially watchful when following a trail through high grass or brush.

Yes, Africa has snakes, but one just learns to be cautious, and if you live on the farm, you may keep anti-venom kits on hand, but the one we need to respect the most is the same one Eve had her brush with in the book of Genesis. He later came to Jesus openly, knowing there was no point in trying to deceive the Lord. Know the Word, and use it as Jesus did. Satan will flee. He twice came to us in the dark of the night in our own church building and where our apartment was situated. The coldest chill literally made our hair stand on end. In the name of Jesus, I commanded him to leave and not return. And he did. The same happened to Phyllis on a different occasion. She sent him to the bridge on the path through the park which we walked to go to the Post office. He left then, but that was the place where I tripped months later and shattered my left elbow. Could I have been tripped? I don't think so, but be prepared lest Satan try to trip you up at the least expected moment and place. He is not limited to Africa and being in a church house does no hinder him at all.