The Invisible Snake: Fishing in Lesotho
A Local Myth
Print this Page- By Christopher K. Onken
- Country: Lesotho
- Dates of Service: 2002–2004
My Peace Corps experience began much the way all other Peace Corps Volunteers
began their overseas tenure: training. We met in Washington, D.C., for three
days before we left for Lesotho. The first 10 weeks of our experience here
in Lesotho was consumed, almost entirely, with training. During our pre-service
training (the Peace Corps does not consider you an actual Volunteer until after
you swear in, after you finish training), we spent some time at a training site
and the majority of the time living in a small village. Both of these locations
are near water—the training site near a dammed lake, and the village on the
Mohokare River. We'd read that Lesotho was home to some beautiful fish.
I interpreted this to mean that Lesotho was home to some excellent fishing.
With this in mind, we'd brought along a pair of fly rods and a vest full
of gear. What better way to escape from classroom lessons and hot summer weather,
I thought, than sneaking off to the river early in the morning or after school?
I've discovered a small community of fellow fishermen among the other
Volunteers here in Lesotho, and we've managed to piece together a few
fishing trips every now and then when things get slow at our sites. I'm
lucky in two other ways as well: My wife likes to fish, and we live a close
hour-and-a-half walk (everything is relative in the Peace Corps) from a river
loaded with fish (or so people claim).
Lots of people fish in Lesotho, but it's not like any sort of fishing
I've ever seen. The Basotho spend a lot of time splashing around in the
water before they cast their lines. Once the line is out the Basotho remain
active, periodically throwing stones into the water. Thunderous splashes of
water from all around the lines are intended to scare the fish over to your
trap, where, presumably, they forget their fear, suddenly get hungry, and chomp
onto your hook. In clear water, these fishermen don't even rely on the
fish's stomachs winning out over the adrenaline coursing through their
little fish systems. Once the fish swim over the heavily hooked lines, the
fishermen reef up on the lines, hoping to gore the fish in the side and then
pull it in. Personally, I've never seen either of these methods work,
but work they must, for occasionally there are strings of fish to be bought
and there's ample evidence of impromptu fish fries and piles of scales
bankside.
This method seems to work far better than my manner. I've yet to catch
anything. My wife's roped in a pair of fish and I've been around
other folks who've caught some gorgeous trout, but I've been shut
out. The one thing I have caught is a recurring story the locals tell everywhere
I've fished. Lowlands, highlands, stream, river, lake—it's
a variation on the same story. Most of the folks we meet while out fishing
don't speak a lot of English and unfortunately my Sesotho still isn't
good enough for me to get more than the rudimentary edges of the tale, but
the similarities stick out in my mind.
The first time I heard the story was during pre-service training. Our training village was a short half-hour walk from the thick, muddy river forming the border with South Africa. The previous day an enormous fish had been paraded through town on the shoulders of a grinning fisherman. I'd had a fish fry on my mind since then and rose early, but still not before the infernal roosters, and silently slipped out of the house and walked through the morning chill to the river. Before I left the river to go home the air would already be hot and still, so I tried to relish the cool air. Like all of my other fishing trips in Lesotho, I got shut out and I had to hurry home to make it back for my morning class. While living in the training village, we shared a house with a local family, learning from our hosts how things get done here in Lesotho, as well as getting a taste of Basotho culture. When they saw my fishing pole and mud caked shoes and pants, their jaws dropped. "You went down to the river? Alone?" I assured them that I had. "You weren't afraid?" Afraid? Afraid of what, I wondered. "A giant snake lives in the water. It eats people."
I nearly laughed out loud. A man-eating snake in that shallow, auburn river? "Oh yes." Apparently it was horribly dangerous to go to the river alone. I thought to myself, what good is it going to be for someone else to be witness to the snake's feast? It wouldn't be possible for that person either to beat the snake off or to run for help and return before it was all over but the spitting out of bones. My bones. After my morning class I looked through our guidebooks on Lesotho. There wasn't any mention of snakes, let alone large snakes. I asked our language instructors if they knew of any water snakes. They didn't know of any, but they said they had heard the villagers talking about an invisible crocodile that lived under the bridge. It was reputed to eat any child foolish enough to go to the river alone.
Sure enough, the next morning when I tried to sneak away surreptitiously for another go at things, my host sister was waiting outside on the steps for me. I didn't really mind the company and I figured it might be nice for Limakatso to take a break from cooking breakfast and cleaning the house. I was sure she wouldn't be any help against a giant man-eating water snake or an invisible crocodile. Limakatso is 16 and skinny. She may be stronger that I am; years of hefting 30-liter buckets of water onto her head for the three-quarters-of-a-mile haul from the pump to her house, uphill, had left her sinewy and tough. But what could she possibly do against those odds? She didn't appear particularly frightened, anyway. At first. As we neared the water, she hung back and was reluctant to stand at the water's edge. I asked her if she had ever seen the snake. She hadn't, but she believed it was there and was probably hungry. She didn't stop me from standing up to mid-shin in the water. In order to do that, she would have had to approach the water herself. Some of her fear was assuaged when we watched locals walking across the river into South Africa on their way to work. Before we left she took a few aggressive casts from the shore. She didn't catch a fish, either. Maybe the snake was taking a break from eating humans and was enjoying a purely piscine diet.
I pressed my instructors for an explanation of this phobia. They didn't know where it started, but they all had heard it when they were growing up and they all confessed to being very afraid of water snakes. I pointed out that the guidebooks made no reference to them. Each had their own snake story though, all similar, but just slightly different. They'd heard the stories from their parents or a friend or a friend of a friend. Few Basotho know how to swim and a fear of drowning was the only rational explanation I could find. This theory satisfied me and seemed to fit all of the other times I heard that story or a variation on it. Local fishermen would stand back while we waded into the water to better reach the deep holes. They didn't make us get out of the water and they didn't join us. They stood on the banks, threw their rocks, and none of us caught any fish.
On a recent fishing trip my friends and I hiked up a tributary to find a set of warm springs marked in small letters on our map. We asked for help from the villagers alongside the stream. They wanted to know what we intended to do there. My friends and I thought a hot soak under the stars, campfire crackling nearby, sounded pretty good. "Aren't you afraid of the snake?" they asked. This snake would have had to have been tiny, for our fantasies of a hot water bath were shattered when we saw the football sized puddle of, at best, lukewarm water. They all stood back each time one of us dipped his hand in to sample the water. Earlier in the week one of my fishing buddies had come across a sangoma, a traditional healer (best fitting our idea of a witch doctor), on the banks of the river, chanting and singing. From a distance he asked the healer's assistant what she was doing. "Singing to the snake to keep it in the underwater caves in the river," answered the assistant. Better there than in the village, I suppose, and better to keep people who can't swim out of the water.
About the Author:
Onken, a Volunteer in Lesotho,worked in the education sector.