Kenyan True Story-Busia Snake Eating Boy

A Rock Python Devouring An Antelope.

Busia Snake Devourer

This is a well known story in Busia and Teso districts. It is the story of a young man who used to engage in a seemingly vile and reviled activity. Now Busia and Teso districts are at the extreme western part of Kenya, they are frontier districts that border our western neighboring country of Uganda. Some 400 kilometers west of Nairobi this is Kenya’s capital city.

The western part of Kenya has its fair share of going’s on in the realm of witchcraft, sorcery and other animistic practices. But even by the standards of these areas this boy was “Special”. He had a knack for eating by first beheading some of the deadliest serpents that are native to this area. The snakes that are native to this area include the very venomous cobras, puff adders, various species of mamba and the venomous lizards’ relations of the Gila monster.

The origins of his bizarre behavior are clouded in mystery, but the prevailing story is that his father committed a mortal crime against a neighbor. The neighbor’s family in turn paid a visit to wizards after the boy’s father failed to pay retribution. Thus the witchmen decided to bewitch the man first born male progeny, by not only making him mad, but also making him hunter and devourer of serpents as punishment for his father’s transgressions.

I witnessed this a couple of times in the late nineties. The drill usually went something along these lines. He Would appear at the market place or bus terminal, which are usually the most crowded places in the town, with a familiar big bulge underneath his shirt .This sight alone was enough to send the market women scampering for safety, leaving their wares unattended to.

Then the men would surround the boy and dare him to reveal what was underneath his shirt. He would hesitate asking first for some money, this would prompt someone from the crowd to throw some money, usually coins of Kshs 20 (A Dime Usd). Then the carefully choreographed exercise would begin.

The boy would dramatically remove a large cobra or mamba that was still alive from underneath his shirt. He usually went hunting for them in the early morning in the thorny scrubs everyday, when they were least active. Then he would proceed by grabbing it close to its head with one hand, at this point he would gesture for more money to be thrown and many would oblige.

He would then bite of the head of the still living serpent until the head was separated from the rest of the body. After which he would discard of the still wriggling body, by throwing it to the crowds. Then he would continue to the grand finale where he would chew, quite vigorously I must say at the head while the crowd watched, some in shock, some in awe and others simply dumbstruck.

Depending on the potency of the reptile he would then fall to the ground after this exercise, foaming in the mouth for a while. When he came to he would collect all the money the crowd had thrown at him and leave the scene, leaving the people aghast. Unfortunately for him on one of his such excursion, after climbing a tree and hitting a snake with his sling and thinking he had stunned it. He climbed the tree to recover his trophy. But alas the snake, a cobra was only feigning death, he reached to grab it was bitten on the face and thus he met his demise. This story will be familiar to Busia and Teso people, the boy died circa 2000 C.E.