Health and safety mad

Do you ever feel like there are nights where you’ve hovered on the cusp of being awake the whole night? This was me last night as I had to get up super early and give a presentation during a call with a bunch of colleagues in Mozambique. There were some useful discussions about future activities and collaborations in the valuable landscape of Chimanimani, on the Mozambique-Zimbabwe border, which I’m really keen to visit again.

Despite how compromised we are due to our NGO status, my absence from the country and operating normally within Mozambique, the partners remain warm to our (continuing promise of) support (that hasn’t really yet been able to materialise as intended). I’m really grateful for this as there is a great group of people involved, and I was excited to connect with them again today. They could have easily become disillusioned by my long-running explanations about registration bureaucracy, and gone off to find others to collaborate with. I do find it hard to juxtapose the exciting conservation work and need with the realities of internal admin and systems. As long as I can focus enough on the former once I’m in Mozambique, I will remain buoyed and not submerged by the work.

A red teapot and upturned bowl (clean and drying on a draining board) were photographed and circulated to the office as a reminder that they are not in accordance with the risk assessment. I don’t think I’ve ever said out loud the line ‘the world has gone health and safety mad’, but I’m perilously close.

I ran out to the shop at lunchtime to buy contact lens solution. Cambridge market is still Covid secure with red and white barriers.