Black Pepper

Black pepper, Piper nigrum

Have you ever seen peppercorns growing on the plant? Me neither. Cute, isn't it?
If you have warm weather and 70 to 100 inches of rain per year, you can grow it, too.

I'll have to tell you more about it later as I need to research it. Obviously I'm not doing too well so far. Look at the color of those leaves. And I really need to get it out of that plastic bag. Speaking of that, I've never seen plants sold in plastic bags until I moved to Honduras.

The ax falls

Remember the arrogant Minister of Education that I wrote about here and here? Honduran President Zelaya fired him, along with two other ministers. The president did a review of all of his ministers and rated these as failing.

The head of the national telephone company which I wrote about here and numerous other places has been reassigned to another position. The new head of Hondutel explained that the organization should have three employees per phone line but currently has 15 employees per phone line!

Today it was announced that seven other top managers in the Ministry of Education resigned in solidarity with Minister Pineda. That's probably for the best. La Prensa reported that "The phantoms of the fired ministers are beginning to frighten the employees of the affected departments." This is because the majority, if not all, of government employees are political appointees and serve at the whim of whomever is in power.

In other news, the President of the National Congress fired 60 employees who work for 40 diputados (congressmen). The reason? These diputados are known as cometas (comets) who, without any shame, only come at the end of the month to collect their salary. He also ordered pay deducted from those diputados who did not show up for yesterday's session.

Politicians getting fired? Politicians getting arrested? No work, no pay? What do you know! Maybe there is hope for this government.

La Gringa's newletter readers

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