after the attack

Two days after the snake attack, I develop heart pains.

I pore through an ancient Snakes in Rhodesia book (no-one appears to have brought out a Snakes in Zimbabwe edition). The map for black mamba distribution is shaded for the whole of the country, bar a tiny corridor along the southeastern border.

There are mambas everywhere.

"What happens if my child gets bitten?" I ask our GP. "It's a problem," he says (as a young premed, he used to do post-mortems on villagers who'd been killed by mambas). Anti-venom isn't used these days to treat snake-bite: the modern way is to use drips and blood transfusions immediately.

But immediate hospital treatment is well-nigh impossible in Zimbabwe, where doctors are on strike and private clinics won't let you through the door unless you can produce wads of US dollars (3,000 for our local one) in cash, straight away. And -- as a friend who recently went for a C-section found -- you have to provide your own drip.

Our dog was Labrador-sized, chunky. She probably weighed more than my son. It took her just 20 minutes to die.

I remember that terrible scene in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, where missionary daughter Ruth-May gets bitten by a green mamba that someone's deliberately enticed into the chicken house. She dies in a matter of minutes: her mother weaves her a shroud out of mosquito nets.

White friends offer tales of horror ("I have a neighbour who lost two Staffies that way" or "There was that kid in Chirundu recently. His parents found him playing with what he said were worms. They were puff-adders. Not a thing they could do for him.") Black friends offer suggestions. Clear out the fallen leaves between your banana trees. Keep the bottom part of the kitchen door shut at all times (so that's why there are stable doors here). Don't go out at night.

I fantasise about setting fire to the next-door neighbour's bamboo (apparently a favourite snake haunt). I decide that DVDs are a great idea: they keep your kids indoors, away from snakes. Mostly I grieve for the dog and for what her death makes me think of now in Zimbabwe: hope gone sour, the sense of hidden evil waiting in the wings.