For much of that year the only food you could buy in the shops was sugar. Sometime villagers earned money by bringing ‘English potatoes’, yams and sweet potatoes, bananas and matoke (plantain) and sometimes a few eggs. In the garden, at the right time of year there were lemons, papaya and guavas. Every Wednesday morning, in the bottom corner of the school field, a cow or ox was slaughtered and hacked into small portions. Our cook would buy us a portion and return with it wrapped in a banana leaf. There was an irregular supply of milk from the school cows. And maize flour.
We had an adequate diet, but the absence of bread, cakes, flour and any tinned or packeted foods meant that we had to do a lot of cooking. Even making a cup of tea required lighting the paraffin stove.
One weekend when Ann had been cooking in the kitchen she dashed into our dining room. “A snake!, a big one! and the stew is burning!”.
I went to the kitchen, expecting to see the tail of fleeing snake. Instead there was a 5 foot greenish brown snake climbing the doorframe. It didn’t go away. Instead it reared its head, opened it mouth and adopted a threatening pose, ready to strike.
The burning smell made matters urgent. I didn’t want to eat burnt stew so a found a garden spade to hit the snake in an attempt to kill it. The snake was hurt. It writhed, opened its mouth and spat a yellow stream of venom. The venom ran down my arm drenching my watched and dripped to the floor. I dashed to the bathroom washing off the venom from me and then my wristwatch in copious running water.
Meanwhile back in the kitchen, the snake was writhing in its death throes on the floor. Ann rescued the stew. I hit the snake a few more times to make sure it was dead.
I had thought there were no spitting cobras in this part of Uganda. I was mistaken. And ever since, if I think there could possibly be cobras around I have worn a wrist watch. The cobra targeted the watch as it would an eye.