By: Andrei Carianopol

MELLA’S SLITHERY QUEST

Mella is an African girl that lives in a hut and sleeps on straw mattresses with her father, and brothers. Her father is very sick in need of help.

Mella loves her father a lot, like most us. Therefore she is trying to seek as much help as she can for his well-being.

The Nganga Healers could not rouse him from his weakness and dying. But she could not dwell, she had to act fast.

Mella walked into a forest one night, and touched her amulet that hung from her neck. She called upon the great Bomu Rambi, the one that gave her the idea. The idea to seek the ‘Python Healer’ for help and gratefulness for her father.

There was one problem though, Mella had a fear of snakes. Her older brothers tried to get the help of the Python Healer before but in the end they fled in terror from the entrance of the python’s cave.

The next morning she set on the quest. She gathered some roots and grains for the long, un-forgettable experience she was going to have. The Serpents cave was in the deepest, and thickest part of the jungle. It took Mella four days to get there. She had to walk through ferns as high as her head, up and down rocky hills, through the wooded mountainsides and cross streams and rivers that even her, who had great balance, was having trouble getting across. All for her father.

Her attention was suddenly brought to a spiral carved in a rock at the entrance of a cave. Right then she knew, she had arrived. She entered the cave and looked for the python, but she could not see anything but the pythons eyes. After a few moments of silence, the serpent suddenly spoke, and asked Mella what the problem was, if she was scared, and if love and caring was more powerful than the fear of the serpent. Mella told the serpent that her father was laying in their hut on a straw mat dying. The serpent slithered its way across to Mella and wrapped around her body to be carried back to the village to help her father.

Again, it took Mella 4 days to get back to the village. It was a burden to walk back with the heavy python through the many mountains, forests, rivers and plains she had walked through. When they arrived at the village, the people ran to get their arrows as they thought the serpent was an intruder, but Mella spoke and told them that it was her, with the Serpent Healer.

When they entered the hut, the Python uncoiled itself and began to chant words of the Buhera Ba Rowzi. Shortly after, her father got up and started walking. Something he hadn’t done for days. He fed Mella and the Python, but now the Python was silent. The python once again coiled itself around Mella, and there she knew she must return it to the cave.

After many days, they arrived back at the cave. This time, the Python invited Mella into the cave. All the animals screamed in warning. But once again she followed the Python inside the cave. She saw a light glimmer in the distance, as she got closer she could tell that it was treasure. The Python told her to take whatever she’d like, for her courage and love. She insisted that the Python should do the choosing for her, so the Python gave her a golden chain, much like hers with a sacred image of the Buhera Ba Rowzi. She knew the Python was a true friend.

Mella shared the story about the treasures in the caves with her family, and one day she overheard her brothers. They were going to kill the serpent. Quickly, Mella ran to warn her friend, the Python, and to protect it from her brothers. When the brothers got there, the Python made loud, thunderous noises that made the brothers once again flee back to the village. But when the people from the village found out about what the brothers tried to do, they got kicked out to live in the jungle forever.

In later years Mella’s father died. The villagers chose Mella as their leader, noticing her courage, her honesty and her love. Mella was the proud leader of the Buhera Ba Rowzi for many long years, visiting the Python Healer as often as she could. Mella arranged for a wooden carving that stood in the village, a perfect carving of the trusted Python Healer.