On Safari
I.
My wife Monica and I were vacationing in South Africa. I had been there for a work conference, and she joined me afterwards for a two-week holiday. We had struggled about whether to go on safari at the tail end of our trip. As a human rights advocate, my first questions were whether it was possible to avoid the colonial legacy of apartheid South Africa. Were there any lodges owned by Black South Africans? Not that I could find after an extensive internet search. Black South Africans we spoke to told us it wasn’t possible. Don’t let that stop you, they said, go experience the wildlife but spend your money wisely, talk to local people, and try to hold the complexity. Conflicted, we decided this was a bucket-list situation and went for it.
We opted for a lodge that was mid-range in price and claimed to be more ecologically sustainable than most. Importantly, it was located on a private reserve adjacent to Kruger National Park. This meant we would go on safari drives in just one vehicle, avoiding the chaos within the park itself where hoards of cars would follow park rangers, ultimately converging on a herd of elephants like paparazzi.
Entering the lodge, we drove through a walled fence topped with barbed wire designed to keep the animals out where they belong, and the humans safe within. We arrived in time for a late lunch, then set out for our private cabin.
Our first “game drive” left just before sunset. And there were the promised animals. A herd of elephants. A tower (then, as they walked, a journey) of giraffes. The highly anticipated pride of sleeping lions. We gawked, obediently, even as we felt a little uncomfortable about how close we were to the animals. My favorite sighting was a lilac-breasted roller that caught the setting sun as it flew off, flashing iridescent blue.
We returned to the lodge where they met us with cold washcloths at the door. The staff had prepared a braai, or barbeque for dinner and Monica and I went back to our cabin to change.
I felt the bite before I saw the snake. It had been sleeping at the bottom of the laundry hamper; I disturbed it when I tossed in my dirty clothes. My first thought was, “this is very bad.” Then the real panic set in. Screaming, I ran out of the cabin towards the lodge with Monica close behind, trying to understand what had happened.
II.
Soon I was lying on a chair, and soon after that, on the floor of the entryway of the lodge, trying to calm myself amid the rising panic of everyone else. Medics were called. Other guests came in, taking in the situation. The staff stood around, unsure of what to do. (One produced insect bite cream and handed it to Monica.)
Mike, a South African guest we had met just an hour before, had the presence of mind to ask me the color and length of the snake. Grey, long, I said. Inhaling, he said quietly, “Black Mamba.” The fact that I recognized the name of this particular snake — even if I had no idea what it really meant to be bitten by it — struck me again as Very Bad. Mike and the staff went off to find and kill it, explaining they needed to confirm what kind of snake it was in order for the medics to get me the proper antivenom.
Within ten minutes, the paralysis set in. The numbness started in my toes and fingers, then gradually worked its way up. I somehow intuited it was heading for my heart. Someone said the word “neurotoxic” — another unfamiliar word. I knew I had to hold on until the medic came.
Many minutes passed. More frantic questions that got no answers (Where is the medic? Why is it taking so long?). Meanwhile, the dead snake was brought into the lodge. It was over six feet long. Monica shielded it from my view but caught a glimpse. It was a Black Mamba, as Mike had suspected.
Twenty minutes in, I started to vomit. I felt like I was losing control. The numbness advanced, now to my face. I could speak in single words only. Monica kept asking, can you breathe? Amazingly, I could.
Rachel, Mike’s partner, was behind me, holding my head and wiping my forehead, keeping me cool as I poured sweat. You are strong, she repeated. Mike tied a tight bandage around my leg to slow the progress of the venom. Another guest charged our phones and made handheld fans. François, Mike’s septuagenarian dad, took my pulse and prayed. People were doing their best.
Monica didn’t let me break her gaze. Keep your eyes open, she said. Stay with me.
Thirty minutes in, where was the medic? The paralysis spread to my chest. I saw Monica’s demeanor shift from calm to panic. I managed somehow to speak a full sentence: “I might not make it. I love you.” She replied, “You can. You have to. You cannot die from a snake bite in Africa.” Under a different scenario, this would be funny. After a few moments, she added,“You have a decision to make. Dig deep. Everything you have been working on has led you to this.”
I knew what she meant. My lifelong journey to stay present to what is, rather than trying to change, avoid, or control it. I focused on breathing.
Summoning a well of resolve I did not know I had, I calmed myself, one breath at a time. It felt to me like choosing life. But I thought, this is also the way I would want to face death, if it comes.
III.
The medic finally arrived, bringing IV bags filled with steroids and antihistamine. My oxygen levels appeared to be normal. With the snake now formally identified, the medic got on the phone and found a hospital with the right antivenom and asked for a helicopter to transport me.
We learned that the ambulance that was on its way to transport me to the helicopter pad had hit wildlife and lost two tires. The medic’s private car would have to suffice. The staff and guests helped to pick me up and carry me to the front seat of his car, and Monica got into the back seat to help hold me upright, as I had no ability to control my body. The medic drove us to the place where the helicopter could land. The wait felt interminable. Even though my breathing was regular, we had no idea what this venom would continue to do to me. The helicopter arrived an hour later, and the EMTs told us Monica couldn’t ride with us due to weight. She was to return to the lodge and arrange her own transport to this place we have never heard of, four hours away, in the middle of the night.
My legs cramped during the ride. Unable to hear me over the noise of the blades, they assumed the pain came from elsewhere and subdued me with fentanyl. An hour later, in the ER, the doctor informed me I would receive antivenom. Although this was why I’d been brought to this place, I was alarmed. The first medic had told me this treatment was a last resort. I asked the ER doctor if it was really necessary. Yes. I asked, What are the side effects? You could have an allergic reaction, she said. And if I don’t get it? You may die. Not a hard choice.
I must have passed out for awhile, and woke up in the trauma ICU. I did a quick review: I could breathe. No anaphylactic shock. My foot burned and itched, but I was relieved to feel sensation. A welcome reminder I was alive.
IV.
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Monica arrived, driven by a kind safari guide roused from sleep. She couldn’t believe I was awake and talking lucidly. I was overjoyed to see her, but they didn’t let her stay for long. I spent an uncomfortable few hours trying to sleep, and awoke in the morning with a new EMT at my bedside announcing that they were moving me to a hospital in Johannesburg. This time, Monica could ride along.
The transit took two hours to the transfer point where we would meet the ambulance from Jo’burg. Then another long transition, under the burning sun, to the new ambulance.
The new ambulance was painted inside with scenes from the bush. Monica noticed a green mamba smiling in the corner, keeping watch for the next three hours.
In Jo’burg, the ER had been waiting for me. I was whisked inside, ten people suddenly all over me. It felt like a movie scene, except in the States I would have a gunshot wound. The doctors were worried about my low oxygen level and blood pressure. Suddenly I had a central line inserted into my neck and was being pumped with adrenaline and various drugs. My foot burned. Monica made sure I was comfortable in the new ICU, and left for a hotel to sleep for the first time in two days
Day two, I awoke, groggy. The morphine I was given for pain had brought the relief of sleep along with many nightmares. Over the next three days on this ward, I became increasingly aware I was not as sick as everyone around me and felt guilty for occupying the bed. Were they being this cautious because I’m a foreigner? Because I am white? The doctor explained my oxygen was low and they had to watch me. Still, it felt like overkill. I practiced my meditation breaths, in one, out two-three, watching the oxygen go up.
By day three, the reality of what had happened to me had begun to sink in. The physical therapist came by and got me walking. She told me another guy had come in the night before with a mamba bite. How was he doing? She shook her head, implying that it was not good. Rattled, I shared this story next with the nutritionist. She asked if I knew much about snake mythology and the complex relationship between humans and snakes. I made a mental note to research this.
I started to lose it on day four. In the open ward, I couldn’t sleep with the constant alarms, patient wails, and nurses’ chatter. A sign on the wall: “A quiet ward is a healthy ward.” Trauma was knocking at the door but I wasn’t ready to let it in.
Day five, a new level of desperation. I’d been practicing my breathing, my oxygen levels were high. I pleaded with the doctor: discharge me, we have a hotel five minutes away, I won’t leave the country for two more days. She agreed, reluctantly.
Within minutes, we had escaped to a pleasant hotel-oasis within violent, overly securitized Johannesburg.
V.
Back home in Brooklyn, snow flurries are falling on a sunny morning. It’s early December, the in-between season, when it’s finally cold enough to wear a warm coat but the windows are still cracked.
I have been sleeping more than I ever thought possible. Ten or more hours a night, plus naps. When I walk I feel a persistent tingling in my foot. A reminder at every step that I am alive.
For the first time, I Google “Black Mamba.” I have to wade through the survivor stories by people who wander off the beaten path and surprise! These “bro blogs” do not interest me.
I want to know more about the snake. National Geographic says, “the Black Mamba is widely considered the world’s deadliest snake.” Apparently this one had enough venom to kill me ten times over. Many people bitten by the Black Mamba are dead within 20 minutes, especially when they are bit in rural areas like I was. It took 4.5 hours before I got the antivenom. But I never lost the capacity to breathe. True, I was paralyzed, but unlike many, I was never in crippling pain.
I have questions. Why am I here? Why did this snake both harm and spare me?
I go deeper into mythology, drawing on ancient understandings of snakes, trying to make sense of what happened to me. In African mythology, the Black Mamba is viewed as both a protector and symbol of personal transformation and change. Shedding its own skin, the snake is a metaphor for ridding oneself of old habits and thoughts, charting new beginnings.
The Ancient Greeks associated the snake with Asclepios, the god of medicine, whose staff with a serpent wrapped around it has become the symbol of modern medicine. The snake was revered for possessing an antivenom against its own poison, believed to cure a patient just by touch. Close to the ground, the snake was seen as connected to the underworld, simultaneously the bestower and taker of life.
In ancient Rome, the snake was often the guardian deity to protect the home or other sacred spaces. The snake was also revered as a sign of fertility and creative life force. Here’s a photo I took from Pompeii, just a year and change ago.
I learn that in every ancient tradition the snake is a sign of sacred wisdom, awakening — and life. Eating its own tail, the snake represents the cycle of death and rebirth.
In modern life, we have been taught to fear snakes. Judeo Christians are raised with the understanding that Adam and Eve are brought down by the serpent. But feminist theologian Elaine Pagels reminds us that early Christians interpreted the Genesis story as a message of freedom, “free will, freedom from demonic powers, freedom from social and sexual obligations, freedom from tyrannical government and from fate; and self-mastery as the source of such freedom.” It wasn’t until Christianity became synonymous with empire four hundred years after the death of Jesus that the concept of “original sin” took root. The snake became evil, a symbol of knowing too much. We, or more precisely our rulers, re-interpreted Genesis as a cautionary moral tale to justify regulating our sexual and political freedom.
Our modern history is also a story of choosing dominion over nature. Thirty years after the end of apartheid, the legacy of colonialism burns bright in South Africa, perhaps nowhere more clearly than “on safari.” Today’s lodge owners are the descendants of white colonizers who built camps in the bush for game hunting. The modern day equivalent is a cluster of luxury cabins, each with their own clawfoot tub and Nespresso machine. And a perimeter fence, an artificial boundary between wild and domestic, danger and safety. We still go on “game drives,” but with binoculars, not guns.
My snake was not evil. It was where it was supposed to be, doing its snake thing, seeking out a cool place on a too-warm November day. We’re told later that this November was the warmest on record in South Africa, and as the climate heats up, human-snake encounters will cease to be an anomaly.
Against this epochal story of human violence, the snake gave me just enough venom to defend itself. In return, it met a violent death. The snake was flushed out of its hiding place with boiling water and clubbed to death. I accept they had to kill it to protect others. But I am ambivalent, grateful to this creature that showed me the mercy we humans denied it.
As for personal transformation? I’m down for that, whenever it comes. For now, I’m sitting with duality. Life, death. Toxin, medicine. Violence, mercy. Snow and sun.
