LOL you guys and "paying a local" is so true though, that was actually his first response when I even mentioned where to look for ball pythons. The first thing I said actually was going with a crew of people who knew what they're doing for obvious reasons lmao.
This must be the most common thing to do, but not always! This dude on another forum who visited Togo found a few on a forested mountainside and randomly on the savannah, while digging burrows/termite mounds apparently were often empty. This was during the day too. (And in other news, there's the argument against "wild ball pythons in Africa do nothing but hide in tiny burrows all day" that everyone likes to pass around lmao.)