Way back while growing up in some leafy countryside, we would only identify a certain tree as ‘the tree of snakes’. It was a small knee-high green shrub whose base-point was surrounded by clumps of foam that looked like snake spit. In our outdoors, we would smash the shrub into pieces
whenever we noticed it germinating anywhere because, as we were told, it
invited snakes. In a previous generation, my uncle now tells me, they never used to smash it. They'd uproot it wholly and use its hollow stem as a flute, courtesy of their childhood craftsmanship to make their own toys.
I would later encounter the tree of snakes as a graphical
depiction of magic and other themes of mystery. A prop in harry-porter style movies
and other horror stories, and I knew that the tree of snakes wasn’t just fodder for empty
folklore or a meaningless myth and our smashing it wasn’t just for child
play either.
My latest encounter with the tree of snakes is when I was admiring the lush backyard. My walk through the green fields suddenly stopped when I noticed the
feeble stems of the shrub jutting up. I immediately turned away to look for a
smasher. Old habits die hard! It occurs to me that there aren’t any children in the village to take
up the smashing. Perhaps, in the near future, if folklore survives and these crawling toddlers have grown up a little bit, they too might come up with their own ways of dealing with the tree of snakes.
This time it’s more disgusting. I detest its location in the
midst of my all time favorite horticultural delicacy. I refuse to admit that
the tree of snakes is actually sharing air and occasionally gets caressed by
the soft tendrils of my juicy ‘tsalakushe’.
The tree of snakes still exists, and I would smash it
anytime I spot it, anywhere, just like I used to smash it while I was growing
up, way back.
