Kenya: What a Slithery Business!
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
April 23, 2007
Anthony Gitonga
Nairobi
Samuel Mwangi shows off his mastery with snakes.
Samuel Mwangi Ngotho is an old style patriarch, the breadwinner for a family of three wives and nine children.
Many years ago Ngotho, who is nicknamed Kanji, decided that unusual circumstances call for radical measures. To fend for his large clan, he struck upon a novel way to earn a living. Ngotho embarked on snake farming in Naivasha and is today a wealthy man by his rights.
To many the snake is the devil incarnate and is associated with sin and devil worship. For Ngotho the creature is the chicken that lays the golden eggs.
Ngotho has been described in so many different ways he no longer cares.
Many are those who avoid and won't speak to him because he is "a man of the snakes". Others refer to him as a friend of the devil.
But the 56-year-old does not care as the so-called devils have helped him marry three wives and comfortably raise his children with no assistance from outsiders.
"What more would a man want than to see his healthy children running up and down and three beautiful women seeking his attention?" he asks.
Snakes come in all sizes and colours
At his small farm in Kongoni, 30km from Naivasha town, he has amassed tens of snakes from the little sun snake to the dreaded Egyptian cobra and the Gabon viper.
Located a kilometre from Kongoni trading centre is a simple homestead set in lush surroundings overlooking forested hills. The well secured home looks ordinary, fenced with wire mesh with a makeshift gate made of woven sisal fibre.
In the compound are a number of wooden structures, some built on tree stumps and larger ones at ground level. The snakes are visible through glass windows.
They come in all sizes and colours, and it is a sight to behold as they coil and uncoil around the farmer's body. It is not something for the faint-hearted to see.
Some are so poisonous that they can kill a human being in 30 minutes while even the non-poisonous look quite scary. The sight of a dead snake makes Kanji, as he is popularly known in the area, livid with anger, as these are the creatures that made him what he is.
"I think, dream and live snakes and to me they are a source of hope at a time when getting any job is next to impossible," he says. He admits that his neighbours deride the kind of work he does and view it as satanic.
"Many people see evil when they see a snake and do not want anything to do with it," says Kanji staring thoughtfully at a blue sky.
Face to face with a spitting cobra
Kanji's left index finger was amputated after the deadly rhinoceros viper bit him as he tried to rescue a colleague.
"It only by sheer luck that I survived given that its poison kills within 30 minutes," he says.
He has lived with snakes for since he was 14 years and can tell the presence of the serpents by the sounds they make and from markings on the ground.
Kanji came into the world of snakes when the late conservationist and renowned author Joy Adamson hired him to play the role of the snake man in the movie "Born Free".
"It was in 1974 that Mrs Adamson came to Kongoni looking for young men to act in the movie," Kanji recalls.
Others shied off but he decided to give it a try and was soon hired for the shooting that was taking place in the Sanctuary Farm in Naivasha.
It was during the film shoot that he met a snake that turned his legs into jelly and made it impossible for him to move or even scream.
"In the dense forest I came face to face with the deadly spitting cobra that hissed as it headed towards me," he says.
Making of movie changed Kanji's life
But his co-actor, Julius Sylvester who had acted in the movie Anaconda and The Big Squeeze, came to his rescue and easily subdued the serpent to his relief.
Kenya: What a Slithery Business!
Kanji was paid a cool Sh15,000 a day for the period the movie was being shot. The making of the movie changed Kanji's life and having had a close brush with death he decided to make a pact with 'the enemy'.
After his stint as an actor he joined the Kenya Wildlife Service where he worked for eight years before venturing into the business of rearing snakes. He hasn't looked back since.
He gets visitors from various learning institutions in the country and for a fee he gives them valuable lessons on snakes.
At the park, he has over 20 types of snakes gathered from as far away as Kakamega forest and Baringo. Among them are rock pythons, rhino vipers, Egyptian cobras, puff adders and northern sun snakes.
He has also kept a crocodile, tortoises, geckos and several species of lizards.
"The earnings from the trade are not that much but at least I get enough to cater for my family and four workers," he says with a shrug.
Rock python is his favorite baby
The largest snake in the park is a 15ft African Rock python that is about a year old.
It is this serpent that is his favorite baby and he keeps playing with it to the horror of many visitors, who fear that it might crush him.
The python coils around his leg and he uncoils it without breaking sweat.
"It kills its prey by coiling around and crushing it, and then it swallows it whole," Kanji explains as the large reptile opens its mouth wide as if concurring with its handler.
With the reptile's favorite food being rabbits and frogs, Kanji has well stocked reserves of these. He says he feeds the reptiles once a week on rabbits or hares.
"I have a feeding program for them that they have to follow strictly so that I don't overwork while feeding them," he says.
Meanwhile, a number of well-fed rabbits frolic in a cage unaware that in a short while, they will be ready food for the pythons.
