My favorite snake has always been the black mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in the world that lives across Africa. They belong to the family Elapidae and are related to cobras, kraits, coral snakes, and sea snakes. It is an incredibly fast snake with a highly potent venom that can kill a human in as little as 30 minutes. It has been my dream ever since my childhood to see one (safely) in the wild.
One day I came across a woman on the Internet in what was then Swaziland (now Eswatini) who was rescuing black mambas from people’s homes and also working to provide antivenom for those that had been bitten. I became fascinated with her work, and dreamed of a time when I could visit her for some training. This, I thought, was something I would LOVE to do. But I didn’t think there was much of a chance of me ever making it to that part of the world.
When I began to teach a class entitled “The Biology of Venomous and Poisonous Animals” at Eastern Nazarene College, I gave an assignment for the students to investigate whether snakebite is a neglected tropical disease (NTD). Two of my students, Shalomy and Cindy, became fascinated with that topic and gave presentations about it at our annual Faculty Symposium. But I still never dreamed I would be able to work on this problem myself.
Sometime in 2021, I was contacted by a man named Silas Wekesa Muchenje about a new conservation area that was being planned called Upendo (which means “love” in Kiswahili). He asked if I could help him and the conservation committee determine how to manage the protected area so that it could become a haven for reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals. I became very excited about this prospect, especially since I was teaching conservation biology that fall. The committee had four goals: (1) the construction of a new water supply well for the village, (2) starting an indigenous tree nursery to reforest the area, (3) determining what species were actually present inside the protected land, and (4) educating the community about the species that lived in their area.
I will quickly say that thanks to the hard work of my students, the water supply well was constructed, and the indigenous tree nursery started. As of the writing of this blog, about 22,000 trees have been transplanted into the conservation area and surrounding lands. Trails have been prepared so that people can walk through the conservation area and enjoy nature. And we have identified 15 species of frogs, several lizards and snakes, and many small mammals such as civets, genets, mongoose, and others. One animal that we are sure uses the area, because it has been seen in the past is the brown forest cobra, which likes to make use of the area along the river.
When it came time to start the education process, the first thing that came to my mind was educating people about snakes because there are so many venomous snakes in that part of Kenya, and also because people kill many harmless snakes unnecessarily. I imagined a scenario where someone was walking through Upendo and encountered that forest cobra. Would they know what to do if they were bitten? So I started working on a curriculum that would help people learn about snakes and snake behaviors, first aid for snakebite, and how to prevent snakebite by avoiding a potential deadly encounter.
When I approached Silas about it, he said we could go ahead, but he really didn’t think they had much of a snake problem in that area. He was in for a surprise and so was I. At the first training session we ever had, there were so many people there that had been affected by snakes. One woman lost her teenage daughter to snakebite. Another had a relative that was bound to a wheelchair due to snakebite. And still another had been bitten and treated, but the treatment cost over $200US which forced her to sell her only cow to pay for it.
Silas began teaching a class that started with 11 people, but quickly grew to about 25 people. They would meet on Saturdays for a couple of hours, and this went on for about 6-8 weeks. At the conclusion of the class, those who could demonstrate that they had learned the material were allowed to graduate with a certificate.
At that time, Silas was the only trainer, and he quickly began to get tired from the amount of training he was doing. So I suggested that he take some time to train a handful of the best students to become trainers themselves. He chose about 8 students and began to meet with them every week. Within a short time they were ready to go out to the surrounding villages on their own. So it expanded from one village to six in a short time, and today they have reached out to 14 villages and hundreds if not thousands of people. And recently, they began to train peer trainers in these villages who can work closely with their own communities and relieve the burden of paying for transport for trainers that live farther away.
What an amazing story and what incredible work by this team! But there is more to come … stay tuned …
Tending To the Garden 
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