Kambangane was patrolling the golden grass when his beady eyes followed some strange tyre-like marks on the ground. The tracks were so deep into the red Kalahari sand, and he rubbed the spiking hair on his arms. 

He had seen a goat-swallowing snake, but had never came across a snake that could chalk the powdery sand with deep belly marks, leaving behind what looked like the yawning Ozombanda River. “Run into the huts, there’s a snake!” he yelled. Kanairombe, upon hearing the loving voice of her husband, grabbed the three-legged pot out of the blue flame and ran into the dung-plastered hut. “There are two snakes!” Kambangane yelled after spotting two-way marks of what he guessed to be two snakes slithering around Omusarakuumba. 

He wagged his hockey-like stick at the toddlers toying with stick castles under the umbrella tree, ordering them to run until he had minced the two snakes. Like squirrels, the ash-white legs of toddlers disappeared into the huts. Now, Kambangane jaywalked after the two tracks. He possessed the inborn skill of telling apart different snakes’ marks. As he tiptoed after the marks, he blocked the urge to scream and pounded his chest like a gorilla.

 “I’ll save the children and my wife,” he vowed. “Kanaa will smack kisses on my cheeks if I bring the dead snakes to her,” he whispered loudly as a grey pigeon laughed. 

The two snakes were crawling in car-width lanes, like tyres of a big truck. “I’ll find the snakes and smash their three-cornered heads, and coil their swinging misshapen bodies around my stick,” he said, as pale-yellow water trickled between his bow-shaped legs. “Kanairombe married a blessing from the ancestors,” he said, hearing his pitter-pattering pee. Suddenly, he spotted the first snake. A black tyre had peeled from a truck, and he wasted no time to crush it with sandy stones and lifted the breathless snake with his stick. 

Now, the brave man must locate the other calf-swallowing snake; otherwise, the red-berried cows would not drink. Again, he tracked the two marks, bragging that he had single-handedly killed one of the black mambas. Strangely, the two tracks turned towards the borehole. “There are four snakes,” he shouted, counting the overlapping marks. 

Now, he tracked the tracks to the borehole and spotted a military-green truck that had snaked too close to the waterhole hidden among the grey rocks. Finally, he hung his urine-drenched trousers over a thorn bush.