T
he calls for help and the loud pounding on their front door awakened both my Uncle Boy
(mom’s younger brother Abelardo) and my Auntie Ofie, but perhaps accustomed to the
frequent interruptions in their sleep, my little cousins slept peacefully. It was a cold damp night
at Kendu Bay Clinic in Kenya (It is now a hospital with its own school of nursing). The sky was clear
with more than a million stars just a finger’s breath away. My aunt went to open the front door,
where she quietly spoke to the group of African men outside the door and told them to wait while
she would go get her husband. Equally accustomed to being the only physician around, to being oncall 24/7, and to having his sleep interrupted often, Uncle Boy was already dressed for work when
Auntie Ofie came to get him. He calmly spoke with the African men at his doorstep, reassuring them
that he would come help their sick family member. But first he would have prayer with his family and
with those who have called him to the Hospital, as was his custom. After the prayer, as he was
reaching for his shoe, he felt strongly impressed to stop and to tap his shoe first against the ground.
Feeling a little bit strange, he stopped. Then holding the shoe up-side-down, he tapped the shoe
against the ground. Suddenly, the African men gave a loud cry of alarm and jumped away! Startled,
and perhaps not quite so awake yet, Uncle Boy peered closer at where his shoe lay. That is when he
noticed the black, shiny scales of the African mamba as the snake slowly unwound itself from inside
his shoe and creep away outside the house. For many days and weeks after, everyone far and near
whispered fearfully about the African black mamba that slept inside the doctor’s shoe that cold,
damp night for the mamba is a highly venomous snake often more feared than lions. One small bite
from a mamba and neurotoxicity w [