The Bafut Beagles

I was bitterly disappointed; I felt that Africa, the dark and mysterious continent, had let me down. Instead of my juicy intrigue, my witches and magic potions full of leopard whiskers, I had been witnessing an ordinary domestic upheaval with the usual ingredients of an erring wife, a hungry husband, an uncooked dinner, and an interfering mother-in-law. I turned my attention back to the collection, feeling distinctly cheated. It was the mother-in-law, I think, that rankled most.

Not long after this there was another upheaval on and around the veranda, in which I played the chief part, but it was not until long afterwards that I was able to appreciate its humour. It was a beautiful evening, and in the west shoals of narrow, puffy clouds were assembling for what was obviously going to be a glorious sunset.

I had just finished a well-earned cup of tea, and was sitting on the top step in the late sunlight trying to teach an incredibly stupid baby squirrel how to suck milk from a blob of cotton wool on the end of a matchstick. Pausing for a moment in this nerve-racking work, I saw a fat and elderly woman waddling down the road. She was wearing the briefest of loin-cloths, and was smoking a long, slender black pipe. On top of her grey, cropped hair was perched a tiny calabash. When she reached the bottom step, she knocked out her pipe and hung it carefully from the cord round her ample waist, before starting to climb towards the veranda.

Iseeya, Mammy, I called.

She stopped and grinned up at me.

Iseeya, Masa, she replied, and then continued to heave her body from step to step, panting and wheezing with the exertion. When she reached me, she placed the calabash at my feet, and then leant her bulk against the wall, gasping for breath.

You done tire, Mammy ? I asked. wah! Masa, I get fat too much, she explained.

fat! I said in shocked tones; you no get fat, Mammy. You no get fat pass me.

She chuckled richly, and her gigantic body quivered.

no, Masa, you go fun with me.

no, Mammy, I speak true, you be small woman.

She fell back against the wall, convulsed with laughter at the thought of being called a small woman, her vast stomach and breasts heaving. Presently, when she had recovered from the joke, she gestured at the calabash.

I done bring beef for you, Masa.

na what kind of beef?

na snake, Masa.

I unplugged the calabash and peered inside. Coiled up in the bottom was a thin, brown snake about eight inches long. I recognized it as a typhlops, a species of blind snake which spends its life burrowing underground. It resembles the English slow-worm in appearance, and is quite harmless. I already had a box full of these reptiles, but I liked my fat girl friend so much that I did not want to disappoint her by refusing it.

how much you want for dis beef, Mammy? I asked.

eh, Masa go pay me how e tink.

Snake no get wound ?

no, Masa, atall.

I turned the calabash upside down and the snake fell out on to the smooth concrete. The woman moved to the other end of the veranda with a speed that was amazing for one so huge.

E go bite you Masa, she called warningly.

Jacob, who had appeared to see what was going on, gave the woman a withering look at this remark.

you no saway Masa no get fear for dis ting? he asked. Masa get special juju so dis kind of snake no go chop e.

ah, na so ? said the woman.

I leant forward and picked up the typhlops in my hand, so that I could examine it closely to make sure it was unhurt. I gripped its body gently between my thumb and forefinger, and it twisted itself round my finger. As I looked at it, I noticed a curious thing: it possessed a pair of large and glittering eyes, a thing which no typhlops ever possessed. Foolishly, rathet startled by my discovery, I still held the reptile loosely in my hand, and spoke to Jacob.

jacob, look, dis snake e get eye, I said.

As I spoke, I suddenly realized that I was holding loosely in my hand not a harmless typhlops but some unidentified snake of unknown potentialities. Before I could open my hand and drop it, the snake twisted round smoothly and buried a fang in the ball of my thumb.