The white snake that spits fire...

One of the stranger encounters was with the "white snake that spits fire". This is such a strange episode in my work, I'm not even sure how to categorize it. I pretty sure that it was a very spiritual matter for the Aringa, (people living in Midigo). For me that did not even occur to me until well into this story.

I was visiting a place called Choro a few miles from Midigo. We had planned to build our base here, and I was looking over the land for the right spot.

There are two small hills, really basalt outcrops, one on each side of the trail/road. If fact that is where the name comes from. Choro means "two hills" in Aringa. Well one was taller than the other and I decided I would climb it to get a better vantage point.

As I approached the hill, several men stepped in front of me. They told me, through the translator, that I could not go there. I was puzzeled. I had never been stopped from going any place before... so I asked why? The men told me that there was a large snake on the hill and it would harm me.

Hmmm... a large snake that would harm me... Most people I suppose would take that as a good answer and walk away. I got extremely curious though. A large snake in that part of the world could be a Mamba, or a Gobon Viper, or even a Cobra. All dangerous, but all rare sights. So I got excited, I started walking toward the hill again and told them I wanted to see the snake. They again stepped in front of me and stopped me.

This time they meant business. They told me that this snake was the "white snake that spit fire". Wow! Now I was really, really excited. All I could think of was that this was some kind of Albino snake, with a biolumonesence. I had never heard of any reptile that used biolumonecense. This could be the discovery of a life time.

Since they were not going to let me go near it that day, I thought I would find out all about it. I started asking questions.

"What is it?" - "The white snake that spit fire"
"I mean kind of snake is it?" - "A white snake"
"Why does it spit fire? " - "So that it can trap its prey"
"What does it eat?" - "Insects"
"Who has actually seen this snake?" - "No one"

uh oh, now I realize something is up. Still there must be some kind of truth to this story. For several weeks, any time I saw someone new, or one of the elders I would ask them about this snake. For the most part I found this to be a "boogie man" story.

The elders told me that their parents told them about it. They said at night they could see the lights up on the mountain (Midigo Mountain). When they saw the lights, they knew it was hunting. It seemed to live wherever there was trouble, a kind of omen. When the snake left the area, it was known that things were ok again.

Later as I traveled more in the region they told me about how the snake had been living on the hill nearby, but the snake had left just before I arrived. In fact they told me it had been near town, when I had first arrived.

More to the science of it. I discovered that there was a kind of lightning bug, that lived in the region. It was quite rare, but I did see it on several dark nights. I believe that this whole thing is a mixture of myth and a little bit of nature. They would see the bugs glowing, and believe the snake had spit them out. There was usually something going wrong at the time and it could be blamed on snake.

I wish I had more time to spend learning from them. This is one of those stories that I'm sure will be lost soon enough.