The best route to Kasey’s village is a bush road from Kossemar to Diabugu. (Ha- that must be a bunch of gibberish!) I was headed with Pondo to have lunch with Kasey and Stripes the day before thanksgiving. Duck benechin! Yum! I crossed the river and headed up the bank. On the side of the path was a man field dressing the biggest snake I’ve ever seen.
I stopped to chat with the men about the snake and ended up buying about 2 kilos of snake meat. They claimed people eat it, so I was psyched to bring some meat home to the family. They showed me the skin tacked to the wall of a house. The snake was huge- at least 25 feet long!
At Kasey’s I tried to get her family to cook some of the meat. It turns out no self respecting Mandinka will eat snake meat. My family said the same thing. We tried to fry some at Kasey’s but it was not sweet. Rubbery and chewy and gross, actually.
The next day (thanksgiving) I tried to smoke the meat. I built a corncob smoky fire and the snake was smoking nicely.
Too bad I went up the hill to call home and didn’t stay by the smoker. While I was gone the snake caught fire, and burned to a charred crisp. Bummer.
I scraped the char off and ate the meat underneath- it was really good- the smoking made it tender and tasty, or it would have been tasty if it hadn’t been all charred.
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