Another day, another labour related problem it seems. I'm not talking at national level here, I only have one employee, but Alfonso was sick yesterday and didn't come into work. Unfortunately the cynic in me knows that today is a public holiday and hence yesterday off, 'sick', along with his usual saturday off would give him a nice long weekend... hmm am I being too cynical? I'll have a word with Alfonso and lay down the rules. Namely - if you're sick you need a slip from the local clinic to bring in the next day. With the huge problem of HIV/AIDS in this area lots of our (the farm) employees need to go for bi-weekly checkups, white blood cell counts etc. This is of course provided for, the state here gives them a special medical book and they just show us it has been stamped to be renumerated for that day. All sounds very systematic I know but you must have these systems in place or people will take chances, as employees everywhere do, I know I used to ;)
Summer has most definitely started here, today it is currently 32 degrees Celcius, pretty warm! Fortunately there is a slight breeze but it's not much comfort. Spring/Summer's onset means snake season is coming, I've already seen a few out in the last few weeks but they should become more common as they come out of hibernation and go hunting for food. This morning there was a commotion as a 'big' snake was spotted in the gardens in front of the office. The 'big' snake turned out to be a harmless brown house, which was safely caught and released into the food store of all places, needless to say this wasn't to everyone's liking and one of my colleagues who is cooking lunch now refuses to enter the store. Not very helpful. I haven't downloaded the pics of this morning's snake yet so i have posted a picture of a juvenile boomslang in the roof of the gazebo, he's very shy and lives between the reeds, only showing his head occasionally then retreating once he's spotted movement.
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