A few quick mamba facts:

• Mam­bas are the fastest snakes in the world, trav­el­ing up to 15 miles per hour (30Km).  For com­par­i­son, most peo­ple run only 12 ‑13 mph.
• They are also among the most poi­so­nous. Their ven­om can kill a man with­in 30 min. as it quick­ly paral­y­ses the vic­tim’s mus­cu­lar sys­tem, even­tu­al­ly result­ing in suffocation.
• There are two col­ors of mam­bas: the green type lives pri­mar­i­ly in the trees, and the black type lives on the ground
• Mam­bas do not coil to strike, but stand up to near­ly 1/2 their length. For exam­ple, a 7 ft. mam­ba can rise up to strike stand­ing 3 feet tall.
• Can strike very accu­rate­ly up to 10 feet or more, depend­ing on their length.

THE STORY: BAMBI AND THE GREEN MAMBA

The civ­il war in Mozam­bique was tak­ing a hor­ri­ble toll, with not only death and dis­ease but thou­sands of dis­placed per­sons. Refugees wan­dered every­where. Orphans and lost chil­dren abound­ed. At the orphan­age, we found our­selves feed­ing sev­er­al thou­sand mal­nour­ished chil­dren each week.

Obvi­ous­ly, such chil­dren need foods that pro­vide max­i­mum nutri­tion in every meal. One of these foods is soya soup, and we used a lot of it. This pro­tein-rich mix­ture is just the thing for the chil­dren, pro­vid­ing the nutri­ents essen­tial for growth. It is dou­bly use­ful, for it comes in a dried form which is easy to trans­port and store.

On this par­tic­u­lar day, I was asked to dri­ve our Land Rover to one of the soup kitchen sites in order to deliv­er some large sacks of dried soya soup for the next week’s feed­ing. Just as I was leav­ing, a man approached me car­ry­ing a tiny deer-Iike crea­ture called a duik­er. He had killed its moth­er for food. Now he want­ed to know if I would like this baby. He had no milk, and with­out help, this week-old fawn would soon die.

If you’ve ever seen a duik­er, you know how cute “cute” can be. They are a kind of minia­ture ante­lope. The grey-brown adults stand maybe two feet high at the shoul­der, give or take. Their Boer name means “div­er:’ but they don’t live near water. Rather they dive into the brush when they’re startled.

When you come upon one, it takes off leap­ing and duck­ing, hur­dling some bush­es, div­ing down behind oth­ers, chang­ing direc­tions. A sin­gle duik­er can zip about like pop­corn in a microwave, very con­fus­ing to preda­tors. They are absolute­ly charm­ing, with tiny horns, tee­ny-tiny cloven hooves, and gor­geous eyes. Now pic­ture an infant one of these. Cute upon cute!

Would I accept it? Heh. So I took it home and began bot­tle feed­ing my lit­tle Bambi.
After she regained her strength, I placed her in an old chick­en pen near my house. Her pen was noth­ing more than a dirt floor with grass walls and roof. The front of the pen and its door were made of chick­en wire. The whole thing mea­sured about a meter wide by 1.5 meters long.
Because Bam­bi was so tiny with no moth­er to pro­tect her, and her pen was not preda­tor proof, I asked the Lord to keep her safe from any crea­ture that might try to eat her.

When Bam­bi was about a month old, I was wash­ing dish­es at 3:30 pm when the Lord dropped this mes­sage into my head. “Go and feed now!”

I nor­mal­ly don’t feed until 4 pm, so I argued with Him. “Lord, it’s too ear­ly to feed now:
He repeat­ed the mes­sage. Okay. 1 knew bet­ter than to ques­tion Him a sec­ond time. I mixed the milk and went out to feed.

When I opened the door of the pen, Bam­bi was sit­ting there look­ing like a rock stat­ue. Nor­mal­ly at feed­ing time she always greet­ed me by run­ning over and nuz­zling my leg, but today she nev­er even twitched an ear. Puz­zled, I stepped into the pen with one foot.

A loud thump in the back right hand cor­ner of the pen caught my atten­tion. An off-white tail flipped out of an old, upside down, cone-shaped chick­en nest that had been left in there. My first thought was “rat”. Then the tail turned over and my mind screamed, SNAKE!

The snake start­ed thrash­ing around inside the nest, try­ing to get out. In one swift move, I scooped up Bam­bi in my left hand and stepped back­wards out the door. Freed now, the green mam­ba struck, but it flew past me and hit the grass wall to my left.

I yelled “Cobra! Cobra! ” which in Por­tuguese means snake. The work­ers came run­ning and beat it to death with their long poles.

When speak­ing, I always com­pare this sto­ry to the Bible’s sto­ry of Daniel in the lion’s den. God con­trolled the lions by clos­ing their mouths so they could­n’t eat Daniel, even though he stayed in the pit for a whole night.I asked the Lord to pro­tect Bam­bi from preda­tors. He warned me when she was in dan­ger and sent me to res­cue her. I real­ized after­wards, once the adren­a­line flow had slowed a lit­tle, that I myself was nev­er in dan­ger because God had sent me to get her.

There is no doubt what­ev­er that He was con­trol­ling the snake. First, He con­fused the snake while it flailed inside the chick­en nest, giv­ing me a few sec­onds need­ed to scoop up Bam­bi and get out the door. Sec­ond this four foot green mam­ba struck at me from a dis­tance of three feet and missed. I that nev­er hap­pens. Third, as the snake whipped past me, its mouth was closed. That is total­ly abnor­mal. Snakes strike in order to bite.

A basic, basic les­son was rein­forced that day: Do not fear to tread where the Lord sends you. Step out in faith. He knows the sit­u­a­tion and He will pro­tect you.

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If you are inter­est­ed in receiv­ing a phys­i­cal copy of  Bren­da’s African Adven­tures book, please email the office ( linda@orphansunlimited.org ) for more infor­ma­tion. A min­i­mum sug­gest­ed dona­tion of $20 will help us off­set the costs of print­ing and mailing.