Emma was diligently going about her daily grind, Khaya Ndlovu Safari Manor’s reservations, a mildly frustrating but essential cog in the hospitality wheel, where one juggles dates, dietary requirements, and the hopeful expectations of guests who often believe that Africa should perform on cue. Her little farm office set against the sweeping backdrop of the Drakesburg- Maluti mountains in the Eastern Cape was usually a place of calm and quiet, until quite suddenly it wasn’t. She heard a faint rustling noise in the corner.
Not loudly. Not theatrically. Just a low, insistent rumble coming from below a book shelf.
Emma, who has grown up with the bush in her bones and therefore knows the difference between imagination and trouble, looked up. The printer was innocent. The aircon was blameless. The noise persisted.
She stood, cautiously, and peered below the bookshelf into the corner.
And there, coiled with the quiet authority of something that knows it is entirely in charge, was a Rinkhals cobra. Not a metaphorical one. A real venomous, spitting one. Hooded. Watching. Entirely unimpressed with her month-end reporting.
Emma exited the office with admirable speed, firmly closing the door behind her while she contemplated her next move. She stood outside for a moment, her heart racing, as she gathered her toddlers, Holly, Charlie and Josie, and considered her options.
Unfortunately, the bookings did not care that there was a venomous snake occupying her workspace. Guests still needed confirmations. Accounts still needed reconciling. Africa, as always, was entirely indifferent to administrative inconvenience.
So back in she went.
Now, under normal circumstances, one would summon a husband. Fred, being a field guide and a man entirely too comfortable with things that sting and hiss, would have handled the matter with calm efficiency and possibly a short tale afterwards. But Fred was not on the farm. Fred was elsewhere, attending to cattle and sheep as farmers do.
Emma, therefore, became Fred.
Her first weapon of choice was a box of Holly’s Lego, a decision that, in hindsight, speaks to both maternal instinct and mild desperation. Armed with small plastic bricks, she re-entered the office and began a cautious campaign of deterrence, tossing Lego pieces at the snake whenever it made a bid for freedom from beneath the bookshelf.
The Lego, however, lacked conviction. It bounced. It scattered. It failed to communicate the seriousness of the situation to the baffled serpent.
Emma, undeterred, upgraded her arsenal.
She marched to the kitchen and returned with a box of sprouting seed potatoes, weightier, more persuasive, and carrying just enough authority to suggest she meant business.
And so it was that, while attempting to complete her month-end report Emma engaged in an earnest skirmish: typing with one hand, lobbing potatoes with the other, and keeping a watchful eye on a cobra who was equally determined to exit his temporary accommodation.
Potato after potato flew. The cobra grew increasingly irritated. Fred was still nowhere to be found. The report, miraculously, progressed.
Eventually, as all good standoffs do, it reached its inevitable end, and Emma was left with no choice but to call for alternative reinforcements. Bashini, the gardener, was summoned. He arrived without ceremony and even less caution, stepping into the office with the quiet certainty of someone who does not entertain logical debates with dangerous snakes. The matter was resolved swiftly, in the practical, no-nonsense manner of those far more accustomed to such encounters.
And so, the office was restored. The bookings confirmed. The month-end completed. Cobra dealt with.
Emma returned to her desk, sat back down, brushed off the last of the potato dust, and carried on.
The bookings were confirmed. The month-end was done.
And somewhere in the fine print of her job description, a clause has been added: that she must be prepared, at any given moment to share an office,
even if her work mate arrives uninvited, hooded, hissing, and under the bookshelf.