By Leonard Korir
Residents of Enoosaen trading centre in Trans Mara West District got the shock of their lives when they found a middle-aged man cooking a snake inside a bush.
Abuya, 40, was pounced on by the passersby when he was preparing to cook the delicacy inside a thicket, barely a few meters from his house.
The embattled man had lit a fire and the puff adder he had killed was lying in a sufuria ready for boiling.
Noticing the weird occurrence, angry residents set upon on Abuya and gave him a severe beating saying such an incidence was an abomination.
Fortunately, his screams for help attracted Administration Police officers who rushed to the scene and rescued him from the charged locals who were baying for his blood.
honey
According to one of the witnesses, Geoffrey Sialo, they initially thought that Abuya was harvesting honey only for them to find out that he was preparing to cook the reptile.
Upon interrogation, Abuya confessed that a witchdoctor in the neighbouring Gucha District had promised him ‘good money’ if he found a snake of certain specifications.
“He told me to kill it (snake), fry, dry and crush it into powder and take to him for use as herbal medicine,” the man confessed.
Sialo said that Abuya told them that he was working on a farm with other men at Nkararo area when they came across the snake, which they killed.
He decided to carry it to Enoosaen to prepare it before taking it to the said witchdoctor.
game hunting
Abuya was arrested and later taken to the Kilgoris Law courts and arraigned before Resident Magistrate Amos Mokoross for hunting game.
The accused person pleaded guilty to the charges and was jailed for three months or an alternative fine of Sh10,000 in default.
In mitigation, the accused asked the court to forgive him saying that he did not know that it was a crime to a kill a snake. Evidently, he had bitten more than he could chew.
In the meantime, and going by recent stories such as the seizure of a dead hyena destined to a witchdoctor’s hut, game rangers may be forced to shift their big guns from poachers’ hideouts and point them at witchdoctor’s dens.
