and then dysentery struck

Mr Mpoga sees the python first. He beckons to me to follow.

I step over the long damp grass to the sodden pile of branches and dry leaves at the back of our house. "There. Can you see it?"

For a moment I can see nothing, just a grey and black log. Fattish, about the thickness of a man's arm. Then it moves, a lazy languid curling.

Mr Mpoga's assistants - he is a house painter - jump back, laughing.

I clutch my three-year-old daughter. She is goat-sized, I realise. Perfect python fodder.

It's not the first time I have seen snakes in our yard in Zimbabwe. Though we live in a built-up suburb, it is close to a lushly-forested mountain.

Mr M, the banker who lives further up the slope than us, had a cobra banging around in his attic not so long ago.
We ourselves had, one horribly memorable Christmas, a black mamba in the garden. It snaked itself into the frangipani tree where I believe it would have done no harm had stones not been thrown at it.

Our bouncing three-year old Rottweiler lunged at it as it lunged at her.

Twenty minutes. Ruby died in 20 minutes, despite my husband rushing her to the vet where she was put on a drip. She was bigger than my son at the time.
That's all I could think of, in my shock: how long would a child take to die? Black mamba bites are survivable, as long as you can get on life support.

But there is no life support machine in the clinics in Mutare, the provincial capital.

Sometimes I feel very far from England where I grew up. Where the most dangerous snake was a viper in nearby Bardney wood. Snakes are at their most active in Zimbabwe's hot muggy Christmas weather, where flies swirl and uncollected rubbish lies on the street corners.

Back to the python in the garden. Mr Mpoga thought it had eaten something. A sun squirrel perhaps: there are many in the flamboyant trees at this time. If it had, it would be sluggish, easy to catch.

When the snake twisted suddenly, I did a quick headcount of the cats - all present and accounted for -- and 'phoned the Snake Man.
Wiry and tough, Mr H arrived with his tousle-haired baby grandson and a large fork-like instrument.

The snake was trussed up in a sack in 10 minutes. I watched it for a few minutes, its body rippling through the canvas.

Maybe I can get a grip on this place after all, I thought hopefully. Surely after more than 10 years here, I should be able to.

And then dysentery struck.