There is a guy who works in our office here in Gobabis, Namibia called Stretch. Stretch knows a lot about snakes. So much that he attempted to break the world record by living in a cage full of poisonous snakes for days.

When we found a snake hanging around the office recently, Stretch took it and put it down the front of his shirt. You could clearly see it struggling to get out of its unfamiliar confines through the thin material of his cotton shirt. Until that point, my slogan for the definition of bravery had been: Bravery is chancing to fart in public when you know you have diarrhea. Now I believe I have to find myself a new phrase.

You see, my terror for snakes is so real that even for a few hundred dollars, I would not have agreed to wash Stretch’s shirt with iron gloves on. I prefer having my boots on while most people walk in sandals around the office. This is mostly due to my suspicion that there is no snakebite kit around. Being a bit of an ostrich, I prefer not to ask and rather have my head buried under the warm sand.

I think there should be an easy way of telling which snakes are poisonous and which ones are not. Say, a visual snake recognition system for dummies. Like a striped snake called a zebra snake. Or a snake with two red bumps at the spot where its tail begins called a baboon snake!

The only snake that comes close to the visual snake recognition system is the puff adder. Its second name suggests a part of a cow. And they even got the spelling wrong!

I will leave you with a line of advice I heard being used recently; Walk your talk. To illustrate his point, the person using the phrase said that the chameleon used to stammer and after deciding to walk its talk, that is why it moves the way it does. I didn’t quite get whatever point was being made, but the one below makes sense:

Here’s to another great weekend. Cheers! And take care.