The snake man of Bangladesh

Mohammad Shafikul Islam is no ordinary Bangladeshi villager. He's the king of the snake catchers.

For centuries his family and the members of his clan, of which he is the official leader, have been catching snakes in homes in nearby villages and cities using just their bare hands.

Now, 46-year-old Mohammad is using his skills to stage shows at top hotels for tourists and officials, and rents his snakes out to film studios and theater groups.

King cobras cost around US$10 and the smaller snakes around US$5 each. He charges up to US$500 for his snake-charming shows.

Renowned as a master of his craft, he’s in high demand.

Showbiz versus day job

This showbiz side of Mohammad's work is a world apart from his day job as a snake catcher, which he does in and around his village of Chototmorpur, just outside Dhaka.

A non-venomous tree snake. There are 82 recorded species of Bangladeshi snakes, of which 28 are venomous.

He has been saving people from snakes, and snakes from terrified people, for the last 35 years. He has been bitten frequently and hospitalized four times.

He started following his father when he was seven years old, watching his techniques, and at 10 he caught his first snake. “I felt proud, brave” he says. “I had become a man as I could start earning for my family.”

But it’s not always so easy. When Mohammad was 26 he was called to the Chittagong hills in the north of the country to remove a snake from a house.

It was a king cobra, around three meters long and the deadliest of Bangladesh’s snakes. As Mohammad attempted to grab the giant, it bit his hand and coiled itself around his upper body. “I couldn’t breathe, I thought I was going to die. This was my time.”

He managed to apply enough pressure to the snake’s head to make it let go. But he hasn’t forgotten this incident, and now never works without at least one other catcher alongside and applies this rule strictly to his sons, who, like him, have followed their father into the business.

Thousands killed every year

In 2009, the Bangladesh Health Ministry reported that poisonous snakes bite around 700,000 people in the country each year. Some 6,000 of these attacks prove fatal, with farmers being the worst affected.

Mohammad’s business is better in the summer when the number of snakes is high and he is called out more often.

Two of Mohammad’s grandchildren and his wife at home in Chototmorpur.

During the construction of the nearby Jamuna Bridge in the late 1990s, South Korean workers would come to his house and buy snakes to eat on a weekly basis.

Mohammad says this was the best business he’s ever done. At that time he was buying up to 200 snakes a week from other catchers.

Some snake catchers in other areas of the country paint their faces with magic symbols, but Mohammad, who is a devout Muslim, says he doesn’t expect any help from above.

“I carry some branches from trees that the snakes avoid and chant some verses from the Koran that my father taught me, but if I’m bitten, it’s my mistake, not the will of God,” he says. “It’s about technique. If I’m careful, I won’t get bitten.”

But sometimes things go wrong. Three years ago, when clearing a house, Mohammad’s son-in-law was bitten and rushed to hospital.

Despite doctors' best efforts, the poison spread to his whole arm, which today is paralyzed. So what work does he do now? “He still catches snakes” says Mohammad. “He just uses his left hand.”

Mohammad plans to retire in five years and hopes his grandchildren won’t have to follow in his footsteps.

Better future for the kids

As the kids sit around him playfully picking up the snakes and wrapping them around their bodies, he says, “I don’t want them to do this work. I do it now so they can have a better life.”

Mohammad has dreams of his grandchildren receiving a full education and going to university. But with schooling options limited in the village, this is far from certain.

He plans to start a breeding farm in the village to decrease the number of snakes taken from the wild for his shows, both to cut his costs and to protect the many species found in Bangladesh.

But what about the future of the snake-catching tradition?

Mohammad says it will never die out. “If people in this area want to live and make money, they’ll have to do this. It’s like doctors -- if there are no doctors, people will die. If the snake catchers stop, the snakes will be everywhere.”

Matt Bennett is a writer and photographer based in Vietnam. When not rolling around the streets of Hanoi on his bicycle, he can be found wandering across Asia reporting on travel and culture. More examples of his work can be seen at www.mattjbennett.com

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