Oh man, I forgot about this story until just now! Ok, so Christine and I are on our way back from Kumi after finishing our project, feeling contented and satisfied with the world etc….. Well, to get from Kumi Hospital (where we were working and staying) to Kumi town (where the busses to Kampala pick you up) you must either walk 5Km or take a boda boda (small motor bike). Now in Kampala, where large, heavy cars with careless drivers zip through the paved streets at surprising speed, I advise against taking bodas too regularly because in general, human skulls and their valuable innards tend to come out worse-for-the-wear when they’re hit head on by pavement at 30mph. However, if you’re in Kumi where walkers and bicyclers are the main form of traffic on the long dusty dirt road that connects hospital to town then bodas are a pretty good option.
So anyway, Christine and I are on bodas, one each, with our big packs strapped precariously to the rear of our bikes with strips of tire rubber so that when the driver swerves slightly the pack rocks back and forth, threatening to fall off. My boda is in front (this is important for the story).
Now, I usually don’t talk to boda drivers very much while we’re moving because they do this really annoying thing where they turn their head sideways to talk back to you so that you can hear them better, taking their eyes OFF of the road and its on-coming traffic in the process, for FAR too long (any time longer than 0.5 seconds). So when my boda driver swerved abruptly, sending my pack a-rocking, and then turned his head to have a long meaningful conversation in response to my “hey! Be careful ok?” I didn’t really hear what he was saying, it was something like “yeah, you people are afraid of those ones” (most Ugandans refer to any group of caucasians as “you people,” I think its funny) He didn’t say much else because I was like “eyes on the road buddy!” while pointing my finger forward and he shrugged and drove on.
So Christine and I get to town, hop a bus, get back to Kampala, la-de-da and so forth. The next day…. we are walking to dinner with our friend Therese (one of the Swedes) relaying our most gripping Kumi stories when Christine says “oh yeah, and Annie’s boda boda almost hit a Green Mamba on the way back to town!” *** those stars represent the stunned silence that ensued after this statement before I blurted “ha-WHAT?!?!” Now, for those of you who did not study neurobiology with Bill Moody at the University of Washington (go Bill!), the Green Mamba is maybe one of the most dangerous/poisonous snakes in the world! Its not super aggressive, like the perhaps more infamous black mamba (that will chase you down faster than you can run and then bite you if you piss it off) but its venom is rife (yes, rife!) with dendrotoxin, a potent neurotoxin that when introduced into the human body, basically stops pretty much all the neurons it encounters from firing any more action potentials by blocking potassium channels….this includes the handy neurons that, oh, keep you breathing, or the ones that keep your heart beating….all those neurons that go unnoticed day by day until the one day when they stop working. They say that when a green mamba bites you, you’ve got about 7 steps to live….that’s foot steps. Just about enough time to think “ow, what the…..” thud.
So! Holy crap! My boda was actually swerving to dodge a crazy-poisonous snake not just joy-riding! Christine saw the whole thing and estimated that our wheels passed about 12 inches from its tail! “eyes on the road buddy!” oops, I mean “hey thanks for not hitting that deadly snake, I really appreciate it.”
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