The other day when I was sitting with Zamzam, (the local council leader), waiting for the women to mobilize and I noticed a couple of the children were picking up there heads and looking around. I couldn’t spot what it was they were looking at until one of them picked up a stone and threw at some small green creature. A CHAMELEON! Being an avid wildlifer and generally very fond of reptiles, I ran over and picked it up. To say the least this COMPLETELY freaked everyone out!
The poor little bugger had apparently had a run in with some other bratty kids in the last day or two because one of his forearms was completely mangled. The hand was swollen, the skin was filled with dirt and some dirty fly and already found the wound and laid a slew of eggs. Since the meeting was already an hour and a half delayed with no sign of starting soon, and expecting that my mother would be calling sometime in the next 20 minutes, I excused myself.
On the walk back to my house I continued to freak people out with the green monster in my hand. Muzungu malalu (crazy mazungu). Luckily for me I am used to freaking people out and generally find it hysterical.
So when I got back to my house I made a decision. Surgery. And since I didn’t have a razor blade and couldn’t be fussed about explaining WHY I would need it I went to my medical kit and removed some gloves, anti-bacterial wash, scissors, antibiotic ointment, a needle and floss. Granted this is always something I’ve said I COULD do, cutting up a live animal is something I hadn’t done yet. I am very used to labs, slicing open any variety of dead animals to identify and remove various organs, tissues, and so forth. But this was a first for me. So I cleaned the scissors in hot water and the wash and made the first cut where the arm was the most mangled. No reaction, easy enough. Now I had to make the real cut—just above the elbow joint in the upper arm. I got all the way through the flesh and when the scissors hit the bone the chameleon made a loud hiss and a good effort to bite me. Can’t say I blame the kid, but I apologized, told her to bite the bullet and completed the cut. I kept pressure on the cut long enough to stop the bleeding then stitched it up with a sewing needle and floss. Bush medicine.
So now word is spreading that the crazy white girl has a three-legged chameleon. (Her name is Grace by the way, because she is a Slender / Graceful Chameleon, and as far as I can tell, she is really a she and not a he. This is probably a win-win-win situation for me. I wanted a pet, but cannot have domestic animals in the park, and I have bad allergies to furry animals. Graceful Chameleons like to eat beetles, arachnids (spiders), and arthropods (centipedes, millipedes), so I have bug control. And probably the best reason for having a chameleon, security! People fear dogs, but you can win them over with meat.
There is a lot of folklore in East Africa about chameleons being evil creatures and bad omens. Chameleons and their body parts are common in witchcraft. They also believe that they have a venomous bite, which is also inaccurate. One example given was that if a chameleon crosses your path from right to left that you should turn back immediately. If you continue, someone that you meet on the remainder of your journey will soon die.
So as a generalization, people here REALLY don’t like chameleons, I am crazy, and I am housing an evil being at my residence.
