Sorry for the delay; routine gets in the way of writing sometimes.
The morning we left Auckland for Hawke's Bay, we scanned the junk shops in the suburb area of Papatoetoe. We found a cheap frying pan, as well as a USB plug for in the car. When we got in the car, I let out a sigh of relief as I plugged my phone into the USB charger that ran off of the cigarette lighter. Who knew that something so simple could make me feel so much more secure in our travels. Before this plug, we had to think hours ahead of time to charge one item at a time, since we only had the one adapter plug. Now we could charge 2 USB items at once (an iPhone, iPod, or one of our 2 Kindles, in any combination)!
We headed toward Napier, eagerly stopping at must-see places. One such spot was Huka Falls, which comes off of Lake Taupo in the middle of the North Island. Huka Falls was not exactly a huge waterfall, but what made it cool was the channel that it had carved into the rock. The amount of water that runs through that channel and churns over the bumps down into the receiving eddy below was very, very impressive. The combination of the deep water and the churning turned the water an almost minty green color as air was introduced in to the water. At the large receiving eddy area we saw the first of the jet boats that Kiwis seem to love. These boats are wide and shallow, making them drift around turns as it drives through the water. It must be exhilarating, plus a little scary as they got closer to the falls.
I drove during our trip--the first time I had driven for any stretch of time since getting to New Zealand. Since I had lost my driver's license, we hadn't risked me driving, but now that I had a temporary one, I tried it out. It was difficult to pay attention to doing most everything against my muscle memory and instincts. I reached for the seat belt on the wrong side, the shifter with the wrong hand, turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal in order to turn into the opposite lane than I was used to. Bleh. Now I get the feeling that once we return to the United States, we'll have a hard time switching back as well.
Once we got close to the Hawke's Bay area (New Zealand's "Fruit Bowl"), we realized we were stressed about the first approach we would have to make to ask for work. We freshened up a little and stopped by a couple of vineyards, only just missing them because everything in NZ closes ridiculously early. We met a man who was doing the lawn maintenance for one of the vineyards, and he and Joe talked philosophy for a long time.
When we left one of the vineyards, Joe turned right and our minds must have been preoccupied, because suddenly we were headed straight at oncoming traffic. Joe pulled over quickly, adrenaline pumping. We were lucky the car hadn't been any closer or we would have had a head-on collision.
We were shaken and decided to head down a smaller side road. We eventually made it to a house where we saw a man just getting out of his car. We puffed our chests out, ready to make the first approach.
Greg, who we found out owns a Hunting New Zealand magazine, owned some of the property around us, including plenty of orchards. But he leased the orchards out to someone else now and we learned something that turned out to be a norm for the area--all the farmers worked with contractors instead of directly hiring anymore. Greg gave us a few phone numbers to call, including the area's biggest harvest contracting operation, Mr. Apple. As we said goodbye, we asked if he knew of any place nearby where we could camp. In the true New Zealand spirit, he gave us permission to camp in the pasture near his house. We thanked him and headed into his pasture where we set up the tent and started to cook a simple dinner of rice with quinoa and canned herring.
The next morning (Tuesday, Feb 11) we packed up and prepared to do some knocking on doors and calling around to look for work. We chased around several opportunities, made several calls, applied to ENZAfoods and Mr. Apple (Mr. Apple had all the pickers they needed, but the receptionist told us we could apply for packhouse work, which we did not want to do because we had heard it was boring and strenuous), and applied at Pick NZ, who gave us a contractor's information to apply with.
After we had done a sufficient amount of work trying to find jobs, we called it a day and headed out to the coast. We stopped just before the road took a sharp turn down the hill and out to the sea. Joe and I jumped over the fence to "run up to the top of the hill," as Joe is wont to do. The view was pretty great.
On the way back to the car, Joe stopped to take a picture just before we jumped the fence. I went first and grabbed onto the fence to hoist myself over. Instead, I got a huge shock and fell down to the ground in surprise. The fence was an electric fence. We laugh about it now, but at the time I almost cried once the adrenaline of the shock had started to slow down.
We turned around and headed back towards town. On the way, we saw a lovely place by a little pond that looked like nice camping. We went down the dirt road and pulled up to a house. Joe knocked on the door and a young woman answered. She said the land didn't belong to her family, but she supposed it would be fine if we camped. We drove down near the lake, stashed the car, and set up camp.
Wednesday we spent chasing down more job opportunities, putting even more effort into the search. We stopped and talked to some people netting some grapes (they gave us a number to call), and talked to a man who seemed to live inside of a couple of old cars that were parked in the weeds for years, and inquired at a vineyard, where they took our names and contact information and said they would "pass them on." The Pick NZ referral was still not available.
One number we called gave us a man named Tim Yorke, who said he was very close to where we are and would come meet us. He pulled off the road and came to talk to us, talking so fast and seeming so rushed that we had a hard time understanding. Almost immediately we felt the skeazy in his manner. He said we could start as early as Monday. We asked about accommodations and got an answer that we at least expected. We had read about the scam that happens in Hawke's Bay where contractors get together with holiday parks and campgrounds and either overcharge for accommodations or underpay for work. Yorke said, "Stay in the Havelock North holiday park, ask for someone named Susana who will give you a good deal, and if you don't want to stay in the holiday park, I can't be bothered." We would have to stay in the holiday park or not get jobs at all.
We were really skeazed out, but we checked out the holiday park anyway. We looked around, looked at prices, and checked out facilities a little bit. Luckily there was no one attending the reception so we didn't have to feel obligated to stay or talk about Yorke or work. This was a scam. We were sad and frustrated.
Luckily around this time the Pick NZ referral got back to us. Andrew F told us to meet with him and a few other potential employees at the Mobil station in Havelock North at 7:30 that evening. When we arrived at the station and F came a few minutes later, we heard some Spanish being exchanged. There were 2 Chileans and 3 Argentinians in the group.
F seemed more legitimate, telling us details and not offering any accommodations. He gave us paperwork to fill out and bring back two days later on Friday. He would have work by the next Monday. We went back to the lake and spent another night, eating sausage for dinner.
Feeling more secure, we decided to go find a Department of Conservation campsite, which of course we never found. We made it to halfway down a huge hill before we decided it was far too steep. We walked down instead and found a very cool foot bridge, but no DOC campsite. We returned to our car as it was getting dark and we were running out of gas.
Worried that we would get stuck in the middle of the bush (a word they use here to indicate a forest) without gas or cell service, we decided to stop until daybreak. We got a little way off the road on this apparently deserted road, but in the night a truck passed back and forth, lighting up the tent and scaring us silly. Joe got his hatchet, just in case he needed to protect me.
We had breakfast Friday morning of leftover spaghetti, then parked at the Blowhard Bush trail head. The walk was beautiful, through trees and ravines, and green everywhere. At the end we crept in and out of caves. It was a productive way to spend a morning.
We headed back to Hastings, where we found a cafe at the grocery store. When I checked my email, I found a few responses to couchsurfing requests. I had sent out requests to see if there was anyone with a spare room we could rent. The first and most likely candidate was Dave Thompson, who invited us out to stay and we could talk about renting after that.
Before going to meet Dave, we met Andrew F again with our paperwork. We met the Italians and a couple of French men with braided beards. The Chileans dropped out when they learned that they would not be paid right away, since they were completely out of money. It was a shame because they seemed very nice. There were 3 Argentinians and 3 Italians, as well as a few other people who did not talk much. We would start work the following Monday, and were to meet Andrew at the BP gas station in Clive at 7:45 to be shown where we were picking.
We met Dave in a pub in the little town of Puketapu. He was there with Paul the designated driver, and Joules, the quite loud and a little obnoxious couch surfer that had been staying with Dave for a couple of nights. She commanded the conversation. We wondered how frustrated Dave was after having to put up with her for several days, but it wasn't something we could ask about until she left at the end of the weekend.
When we followed Dave home, he showed us to our room inside his house and we retired early, but only after we had made an effort to be sociable. We were thankful that Dave wasn't terribly keen on staying up late to be sociable with us, because we were completely pooped after several days of camping, poor sleep, and no showers.
On Saturday, Dave showed us our rent option. The back of his garage had a small unit, but after a year or two of not being used, it was in quite a state. Leaves blowing in the door, spiders and dirt ground into the carpet, and a bathroom wet with old water. We spent much of the morning cleaning, and were given a pause to go geocaching with Dave and his friend Paula. Paula brought her granddaughter Cadence, whose face had the crusty leftover paint of a face-painted butterfly.
After driving for a ways (and seeing wild goats in the process), we arrived at a beach and started hiking to the first hidden geocache. Cadence and Paula fell behind, so after Joe found and examined his first geocache, Dave hid it again and sweetly asked Cadence to 'find it because we couldn't.' In this way, he let Cadence have the joy of finding the mysterious cache. Joe had the joy of finding it, but then Cadence got to experience the same joy.
I got to lead the search for the next one, which was fairly easy to find. We found it, but couldn't retrieve it just yet because there were “muggles” about. As soon as the muggles left, we took out the cache and signed the logbook.
We headed back to Dave's to do laundry, hang it out on the line, and then promptly go to bed. Joe noticed as we were headed to bed that I was feeling down and so, just like him, he suddenly got me excited, saying we should go steal some grapes from the vineyard next door. We hopped the fence, grabbed a few, and giggled our way back over the fence to eat our grapes in our new little home.
That night I had a very sad dream. Joe and I had a huge fight, which led to a break-up. Shortly afterward, he had a heart attack in the mall and he couldn't be revived. He was taken away in an ambulance. My heart was broken and I sank into a depression, but then suddenly a friend told me, “Didn't you hear? They were able to revive him in the ambulance!” I was so excited that I put my friend over my shoulder to go to the hospital to see him.
Sunday (the 16th of February) was our last chance for relaxing as we got to enjoy the internet and make the unit ours.
Starting Monday, we were picking apples. This involved buckets with soft cloth bottom. You pick a bucketful of apples and then unhook the cloth, which turns into a nice little chute that the fruit can roll down. We had to be very careful because apples bruise easily, so they needed babied.
They gave us a small introduction to the work (how to use the three-legged ladder, how to treat the apples with care, how to pull the apples off the trees) and then we went to it. The price that they were paying for a bin (a wooden crate perhaps 5x5x4 feet) was $30. Geoff (the owner of the orchard) and Andrew (the contractor who was technically our boss) said that beginners would probably average 4 bins per day, which would be just above minimum wage. They led us to believe that if we worked hard, we could make lots of money, but within a few days, we realized how impossible that would have been. The contract we had signed said we were entitled to AT LEAST minimum wage, meaning that if we picked three or fewer bins in a day, Andrew topped that off so we got at least minimum wage. To his credit, this was all legal in an area of the country where scheming against the foreigners was common practice.
To make matters worse, they had us working in pairs, which pitted us against one another. As much as I try to staunchly deny it, I physically can't keep up with Joe. My body isn't made for it. Sure, I could have big muscles and an even bigger power of will, but at the end of the day, I weigh less than Joe and just on this factor alone, I can't compete because I don't have as much bulk and weight to throw huge buckets of fruit around and up and down ladders.
And it took its toll on our relationship. The situation was complex between us. I can't throw the same weight around, which made me a little slower. Joe saw every second of rest as waste and started to resent the fact that if I picked slower, he would have to pick extra fast to make up for what I couldn't do. And in turn, I became resentful that I was being treated like a subsidized slacker. To make matters worse, Joe would talk and laugh and joke with the Argentinians on one side and Italians on the other, but any exchange of words with me was to say, “you're really doing it like that?” Eventually I was looking for ways to escape from the resentment and I started listening to podcasts (Stuff You Should Know, mostly). This brought out even more sighs and irritation, but I didn't have to hear it (thank you, noise-canceling earbuds).
By Thursday morning after many furtive glances, probing questions about efficiency, and a general show of frustration, I had had enough. He had even started openly criticizing the way I was picking, climbing ladders, and sorting. I firmly suggested (read: demanded) we pick our own bins because I was tired of feeling like a pity case, a welfare moocher, or a lazy bum. I was working hard and I was not willing to take any more crap from Joe. He felt like the situation was unfair because he was subsidizing me. I was hurt primarily because I don't like admitting my weaknesses like that (she flies with her own wings, damnit!) and secondarily because I resented being some sort of charity pity case whose work would never be comparable to his.
We were right in the middle of the day, so switching to a bin each instead of a bin between the two of us would have been complicated to explain to Geoff (the farmer and owner of the orchard) and Andrew (our boss, the contractor). We continued the way we were until the end of the day.
In our relationship, there haven't been very many moments where I take a hard line about something. Joe and I are reasonable human beings and we're good at give and take. This was one of the first moments in our relationship where I held my ground. And boy did I hold it. We spent an hour sitting in the grocery store parking lot discussing fruit picking and its effect on us. I felt like one of the big fountain fireworks; a burning display of fire and light. I was so mad at what the job had done to us and was unwilling to continue working with someone who saw me as a drain on him. The one day we had gotten 4 bins each (8 between the two of us), we had worked our guts out, and no matter what the tangible difference between our productivity was, I had worked my guts out just like he had worked his out.
After an hour of the burn in my eyes, we came to a better understanding and to Joe's high credit, he apologized and we were going to try to not be pitted against one another anymore. I was still so angry that even once we had gotten in the store, I had to have a hug and shed a couple of tears before the anger would slow down.
And thank goodness we reconciled, because on the second climb up the ladder the next morning, I fell off of it. I remember being 2 or 3 rungs from the top, losing my balance, thinking to myself “oh crap, but I suppose there's no stopping it now,” and relaxing into the fall. I remember looking down, seeing a branch come at me, and then hitting the ground with the bucket of apples landing on my chest.
I must have cried out or something, because before I even had time to process what had happened, Joe was yelling and racing to my side. I could tell he was scared and I was scared too, so I laid still and started wiggling parts of my body. Everything was still working, but Joe was still scared because I was eerily calm. I was really just doing the rounds on my muscles and nerves to see what worked. It all moved like it should have.
The pulled the bucket and apples off of me and slowly sat me up. Geoff told me to take a break and “have a smoke” if I needed one. I felt fine, though there was tightness in my neck. When I was a baby, I dove out of the bed of a pickup truck onto concrete, and my dad always said, “thank goodness she landed on her head or she mighta hurt something!” Well, thank goodness my neck broke my fall on that branch I had watched get closer and closer in utterly forgettable slow-motion.
The rather interesting Kiwi (a dude in his thirties who had survived cancer and had an Asian wife/girlfriend) later picked a fight with Geoff about his “first aid” protocol of having me take a smoke break. I'm the sort of person who secretly likes positive attention, but regrets attention paid for things like falling off ladders and making a big scene, so it was frustrating to hear that it had caused a fight. I don't like stirring shit up, as it were.
With such a turbulent week for our relationship, it renewed my faith in us to see how Joe handled the whole thing. He was scared out of his mind for me and baby-ed me when I needed it. He told Geoff and Andrew he'd like to get my neck checked out by a doctor. The doctor found nothing to be worried about, but there was a weird moment where he didn't want to classify it as a work injury, because of “red tape.” Perhaps there really was much more paperwork and hassle thanks to the accident insurance that all employees in NZ are covered by, but I couldn't help feeling suspicious, especially when Andrew asked which doctor we had gone to and knew him on a first name basis. I'm sure it was not a problem, but I was still worried about getting taken advantage of.
Joe kept telling me he loved me and he was thankful I was okay. He was very, very thankful that we had resolved our issues the night before, as he would have felt like the worst person in the world if I had been rushing to work harder due to pressure from him. If he was thankful that I didn't paralyze myself, I was a hundred times more thankful that I wasn't paralyzed, and that I had someone to look after me.
Within an hour of the whole dive-off-a-tall-ladder incident, Joe and I were discussing whether the job was worth the money. Sure, we were making okay money, but at what cost? Was it worth the exposure and risk of climbing up and down ladders, stretching just a little farther to get one more apple at the end of an arm's length, and the light verbal abuse from the orchard owner—another story entirely. We agreed to search for something else while continuing work at the orchard.
The slightly crazy Kiwi with his Asian wife started getting louder and louder, and we slowly watched the whole orchard start to stir with discontent. I distrusted the Kiwi, but was still feeling played. We were working our guts out for minimum wage doing work that wasn't really fun.
Kiwis are interesting people. They're almost a little predictable and sort of have this half-hint way of expressing themselves, sort of easing themselves into passive-aggressive suggestions. Geoff the orchard owner was no exception. He had this huge bottom lip constantly stuck out dumbly like Bubba from the movie Forest Gump, and he always drove around his smelly, oily tractor. He would look at our bin and use indirect speech to communicate what he wanted us to do. Instead of saying, “Emily and Joe, I see your bin has a lot of green apples in it. I would like you to please pick only the red ones and leave green ones on the tree,” he would instead bumble about and eventually say, “There's a lot of green ones in here, eh? I think we only want red ones. We don't want to pick the green ones, or else the bins will get full of green ones.”
Since we were working our guts out to even finish enough bins to meet minimum wage, some of his requests seemed plainly stupid. Babying the apples and sorting them was basically him asking us to make less money so he could make more. There was no incentive to sort or baby them because the more time we spent doing so would mean we would fill bins slower.
To make matters worse, the number of bins were all lumped together by week for the pay, which meant that we would have to get 4 bins or more each and every day to be paid more than minimum wage for the week. This meant that our first week when we were getting 2 and 3 bins the first few days, every day that week would be spent catching the toll up. If we got 2 bins the first day, we would have had to get 6 bins the second day in order to break even, much less make more than minimum wage. The Kiwi told us that the reason we were having trouble was that the orchard had lousy trees and small fruit. Some rows of trees were better than others, so if you got stuck on one of the bad rows, the average for bins for the week was shot.
At first we were naive and worried mostly about pleasing bosses and picking enough to continue to hold the job (if you were VERY slow and Andrew had to top up your pay a lot just to make minimum wage, he would terminate your employment because he “couldn't just give money away for free, but more on that later). Very quickly and with the help of the Kiwi—the Instigator—we stopped caring and learned to look out for ourselves.
After the fall from the ladder, Joe did most of the high stuff, which I was thankful for. Again, it's pretty tough to sling around full buckets of apples when I don't have as much weight to counter-balance it.
We became friends with most of the pickers, as always happens. The oppressed feel united under an oppressor. :)
We started giving the three Italians rides to and from work, even though it was pretty out of our way to do so. We asked for about half of what they were paying for a bus, which was more than enough to cover our gas for the day, plus we got to hang out with them at the end of the day.
The Italians are jovial and passionate. Every Italian I have ever met has the outer shell of the loud, wine-drinking Italian of cliches, but inside they seem to have a deeper understanding of humanity that is surprising in its depth. We started sitting together in their apartment in the evening sun drinking Italian coffee with cookies and discussing life. I saw Derek look at and speak about Martina the way Joe looks at and speaks about me and I felt flattered all over again through their connection. The connection between Joe and I is nothing if not flattering to us both.
The third Italian, Mierco, is sweet, but maybe a little slow. His speech is just slightly impaired and he has a little bit of a hunch to his back. Martina and Derek tell us he eats nothing but chocolate and cookies—all packaged food. This is really frustrating because it really is his choice, but it is scary to see someone kill themselves slowly in front of you. Mierco isn't going to die soon, but the processed food is not doing him any favors. He's skinny and pale and always looks a little weak or troubled. He's so sweet, but we would love to see him change some of his eating habits.
Martina does not speak more than a few words of English, but she understands a lot. Derek's English was choppy at first, but has slowly become more flexible and confident. We enjoy learning a little bit of Italian from them.
The Argentinians (Nicolas and Jesus) are also super nice. South Americans are so damn tranquil. We really enjoyed them.
Early in our second week we got a call from Peter and Colleen's son-in-law Grant from Dargaville. His farm would be starting digging kumara (sweet potatoes) by the 3rd of March. We asked if he had room for a couple of Italians and told him we would give him an answer by mid-week. By Wednesday we had given our three day notice as prescribed in the contract we signed. The crazy Kiwi and his wife had already abandoned the sinking ship and a day after we and the Italians quit, so did the Argentinians. All week pickers had been taking one look at the size and frequency of the apples and peaches we were picking and turning on their heels and leaving, even though by doing so they were violating the 3 day notice rule in the contract, meaning they were losing any pay they had earned in the last three days. All in all, I think the exodus was something like eight couples—sixteen people—who left.
The morning after we gave Andrew our three day notice, Geoff's abuse got a little worse. Where he made passive-aggressive comments before, he was now making outright aggressive comments. He would examine our bin and yell, "Stop picking the green ones--you're just wasting my time!" He kept yelling at Joe when he would see a few peaches Joe had missed, probably feeling powerful and justified. If we climbed up to get every last peach off of the tree, there is no way we would be able to pick even half of the number necessary to make minimum wage. He treated us as if we were stupid, even going so far as to pick with us in order to show us how it was done. I am happy to admit that he went at exactly the same speed that we did and had at least as many green or bad ones as we did.
There was one point on our last day where he said, "Man, I went to the United States and thought everyone was so nice, but then I come back here to New Zealand.." and trailed off suggestively, to which Joe continued, "and there are Americans here who are assholes?" To which Geoff gave a nasty laugh and said, "you said it, not me." At the end of it, he shook our hands, but offered nothing more, which was fine by me. I had detached. To give credit where it's due, Joe kept a level head the whole time Geoff was abusive. I was very happy and proud of him for that, and I only hope that my silence is good enough in return, because silence is the only way I can hide the blatant dislike.
The worst part about the whole experience was feeling like Geoff and Andrew knew this was coming. We heard Geoff talking to Andrew asking for more pickers, as if he were asking for more paper towels in a public restroom--like we were expendable and replaceable. It was frustrating that by quitting we weren't really sending him a message, because he could replace us as easy as could be with more foreigners whose naivete would give the orchard a week or two of work before another strike happened.
It sort of went back to a couple of things Andrew said... first, he said that he couldn't just give money away for free. In an economy, money is exchanged for work--a swap of value for value. But what people miss many times is that the equation also goes the other way. A producer has limited money and can't give it away, but the worker has limited man hours and also can't give those hours and that work away. Money is exchanged for work while work is exchanged for money. And I was not prepared to hurt, maim, or kill myself doing a job that went under-appreciated monetarily and otherwise.
Second, Andrew said to us once that he had a hard time dealing with backpackers because the backpackers were "like the wind." After our experience, it got me thinking--did the contractors and orchard owners treat us like dirt because we were unreliable like the wind coming in and out; or were backpackers like the wind because we are treated like dirt? Which came first, the chicken or the proverbial hen?
Another reason we hated and needed to get out of the orchard situation. Joe and I are good people and hard workers. We're willing to stick to something and see it through and we've always had great glowing recommendations from employers. We would have been loyal and hard-working, but we certainly won't be if it goes unrewarded and even punished. Andrew and Geoff missed out on two great people, if you can excuse the narcissism.
We were so glad to get out, though we were going to miss our “landlord” Dave. We liked our little room, getting to be part of his revolving door of constant couch surfers, and getting to have as many talks as we wanted with him.
After our last day of work, we organized a barbecue at Dave's house. First we went into town to spend the money we had won (we being Dave, Joe, an American girl, and a very interesting sort-of American young man) at the pub playing Trivia. We had gotten second place, so we got a little bit of spending money to drink.
Afterwards we went back to the house where we cooked pounds and pounds and pounds of chicken and steak. We had the three Italians, two Taiwanese, one American, one sort-of American, two Argentinians, one British (Dave, though a longtime citizen of New Zealand, actually really came from Scheffield in England) and Joe and I. We had brought everyone together and it felt amazing to know that everyone was mixing and smiling and laughing. There were many languages being spoken and if all else failed, they mimed. It was one of those nights where the clocks don't work, or if they do, no one cares.
It was a beautiful wrap-up to our mixed bag that was Hawke's Bay. We stayed up until 4 in the morning, talked, drank, and ate until the slow blink got longer and longer. We took the Italians home (we would pick them up the next morning) and returned to Dave's to discuss life with the Argentinians, who talked about humanity with depth and breadth and a warm sense of acceptance. I realized how much I had missed South Americans, especially when they gave me the customary cheek kiss. Don't get the wrong idea, it's an innocent kiss, but after a night of deep talk, it spoke to me saying I had found another friendly soul in the world.
We went to bed for a few hours, anxiously looking forward to heading off on the next part of the job adventure. We were sad to leave Dave, but looking forward to seeing Peter and Colleen again, who had offered to put us up for a little bit until we figured out where to live. It was good to be on the move again and getting out of a situation that was nothing but bad for us!
The morning we left Auckland for Hawke's Bay, we scanned the junk shops in the suburb area of Papatoetoe. We found a cheap frying pan, as well as a USB plug for in the car. When we got in the car, I let out a sigh of relief as I plugged my phone into the USB charger that ran off of the cigarette lighter. Who knew that something so simple could make me feel so much more secure in our travels. Before this plug, we had to think hours ahead of time to charge one item at a time, since we only had the one adapter plug. Now we could charge 2 USB items at once (an iPhone, iPod, or one of our 2 Kindles, in any combination)!
We headed toward Napier, eagerly stopping at must-see places. One such spot was Huka Falls, which comes off of Lake Taupo in the middle of the North Island. Huka Falls was not exactly a huge waterfall, but what made it cool was the channel that it had carved into the rock. The amount of water that runs through that channel and churns over the bumps down into the receiving eddy below was very, very impressive. The combination of the deep water and the churning turned the water an almost minty green color as air was introduced in to the water. At the large receiving eddy area we saw the first of the jet boats that Kiwis seem to love. These boats are wide and shallow, making them drift around turns as it drives through the water. It must be exhilarating, plus a little scary as they got closer to the falls.
I drove during our trip--the first time I had driven for any stretch of time since getting to New Zealand. Since I had lost my driver's license, we hadn't risked me driving, but now that I had a temporary one, I tried it out. It was difficult to pay attention to doing most everything against my muscle memory and instincts. I reached for the seat belt on the wrong side, the shifter with the wrong hand, turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal in order to turn into the opposite lane than I was used to. Bleh. Now I get the feeling that once we return to the United States, we'll have a hard time switching back as well.
Once we got close to the Hawke's Bay area (New Zealand's "Fruit Bowl"), we realized we were stressed about the first approach we would have to make to ask for work. We freshened up a little and stopped by a couple of vineyards, only just missing them because everything in NZ closes ridiculously early. We met a man who was doing the lawn maintenance for one of the vineyards, and he and Joe talked philosophy for a long time.
When we left one of the vineyards, Joe turned right and our minds must have been preoccupied, because suddenly we were headed straight at oncoming traffic. Joe pulled over quickly, adrenaline pumping. We were lucky the car hadn't been any closer or we would have had a head-on collision.
We were shaken and decided to head down a smaller side road. We eventually made it to a house where we saw a man just getting out of his car. We puffed our chests out, ready to make the first approach.
Greg, who we found out owns a Hunting New Zealand magazine, owned some of the property around us, including plenty of orchards. But he leased the orchards out to someone else now and we learned something that turned out to be a norm for the area--all the farmers worked with contractors instead of directly hiring anymore. Greg gave us a few phone numbers to call, including the area's biggest harvest contracting operation, Mr. Apple. As we said goodbye, we asked if he knew of any place nearby where we could camp. In the true New Zealand spirit, he gave us permission to camp in the pasture near his house. We thanked him and headed into his pasture where we set up the tent and started to cook a simple dinner of rice with quinoa and canned herring.
The next morning (Tuesday, Feb 11) we packed up and prepared to do some knocking on doors and calling around to look for work. We chased around several opportunities, made several calls, applied to ENZAfoods and Mr. Apple (Mr. Apple had all the pickers they needed, but the receptionist told us we could apply for packhouse work, which we did not want to do because we had heard it was boring and strenuous), and applied at Pick NZ, who gave us a contractor's information to apply with.
After we had done a sufficient amount of work trying to find jobs, we called it a day and headed out to the coast. We stopped just before the road took a sharp turn down the hill and out to the sea. Joe and I jumped over the fence to "run up to the top of the hill," as Joe is wont to do. The view was pretty great.
On the way back to the car, Joe stopped to take a picture just before we jumped the fence. I went first and grabbed onto the fence to hoist myself over. Instead, I got a huge shock and fell down to the ground in surprise. The fence was an electric fence. We laugh about it now, but at the time I almost cried once the adrenaline of the shock had started to slow down.
We turned around and headed back towards town. On the way, we saw a lovely place by a little pond that looked like nice camping. We went down the dirt road and pulled up to a house. Joe knocked on the door and a young woman answered. She said the land didn't belong to her family, but she supposed it would be fine if we camped. We drove down near the lake, stashed the car, and set up camp.
Wednesday we spent chasing down more job opportunities, putting even more effort into the search. We stopped and talked to some people netting some grapes (they gave us a number to call), and talked to a man who seemed to live inside of a couple of old cars that were parked in the weeds for years, and inquired at a vineyard, where they took our names and contact information and said they would "pass them on." The Pick NZ referral was still not available.
One number we called gave us a man named Tim Yorke, who said he was very close to where we are and would come meet us. He pulled off the road and came to talk to us, talking so fast and seeming so rushed that we had a hard time understanding. Almost immediately we felt the skeazy in his manner. He said we could start as early as Monday. We asked about accommodations and got an answer that we at least expected. We had read about the scam that happens in Hawke's Bay where contractors get together with holiday parks and campgrounds and either overcharge for accommodations or underpay for work. Yorke said, "Stay in the Havelock North holiday park, ask for someone named Susana who will give you a good deal, and if you don't want to stay in the holiday park, I can't be bothered." We would have to stay in the holiday park or not get jobs at all.
We were really skeazed out, but we checked out the holiday park anyway. We looked around, looked at prices, and checked out facilities a little bit. Luckily there was no one attending the reception so we didn't have to feel obligated to stay or talk about Yorke or work. This was a scam. We were sad and frustrated.
Luckily around this time the Pick NZ referral got back to us. Andrew F told us to meet with him and a few other potential employees at the Mobil station in Havelock North at 7:30 that evening. When we arrived at the station and F came a few minutes later, we heard some Spanish being exchanged. There were 2 Chileans and 3 Argentinians in the group.
F seemed more legitimate, telling us details and not offering any accommodations. He gave us paperwork to fill out and bring back two days later on Friday. He would have work by the next Monday. We went back to the lake and spent another night, eating sausage for dinner.
Feeling more secure, we decided to go find a Department of Conservation campsite, which of course we never found. We made it to halfway down a huge hill before we decided it was far too steep. We walked down instead and found a very cool foot bridge, but no DOC campsite. We returned to our car as it was getting dark and we were running out of gas.
Worried that we would get stuck in the middle of the bush (a word they use here to indicate a forest) without gas or cell service, we decided to stop until daybreak. We got a little way off the road on this apparently deserted road, but in the night a truck passed back and forth, lighting up the tent and scaring us silly. Joe got his hatchet, just in case he needed to protect me.
We had breakfast Friday morning of leftover spaghetti, then parked at the Blowhard Bush trail head. The walk was beautiful, through trees and ravines, and green everywhere. At the end we crept in and out of caves. It was a productive way to spend a morning.
We headed back to Hastings, where we found a cafe at the grocery store. When I checked my email, I found a few responses to couchsurfing requests. I had sent out requests to see if there was anyone with a spare room we could rent. The first and most likely candidate was Dave Thompson, who invited us out to stay and we could talk about renting after that.
Before going to meet Dave, we met Andrew F again with our paperwork. We met the Italians and a couple of French men with braided beards. The Chileans dropped out when they learned that they would not be paid right away, since they were completely out of money. It was a shame because they seemed very nice. There were 3 Argentinians and 3 Italians, as well as a few other people who did not talk much. We would start work the following Monday, and were to meet Andrew at the BP gas station in Clive at 7:45 to be shown where we were picking.
We met Dave in a pub in the little town of Puketapu. He was there with Paul the designated driver, and Joules, the quite loud and a little obnoxious couch surfer that had been staying with Dave for a couple of nights. She commanded the conversation. We wondered how frustrated Dave was after having to put up with her for several days, but it wasn't something we could ask about until she left at the end of the weekend.
When we followed Dave home, he showed us to our room inside his house and we retired early, but only after we had made an effort to be sociable. We were thankful that Dave wasn't terribly keen on staying up late to be sociable with us, because we were completely pooped after several days of camping, poor sleep, and no showers.
On Saturday, Dave showed us our rent option. The back of his garage had a small unit, but after a year or two of not being used, it was in quite a state. Leaves blowing in the door, spiders and dirt ground into the carpet, and a bathroom wet with old water. We spent much of the morning cleaning, and were given a pause to go geocaching with Dave and his friend Paula. Paula brought her granddaughter Cadence, whose face had the crusty leftover paint of a face-painted butterfly.
After driving for a ways (and seeing wild goats in the process), we arrived at a beach and started hiking to the first hidden geocache. Cadence and Paula fell behind, so after Joe found and examined his first geocache, Dave hid it again and sweetly asked Cadence to 'find it because we couldn't.' In this way, he let Cadence have the joy of finding the mysterious cache. Joe had the joy of finding it, but then Cadence got to experience the same joy.
I got to lead the search for the next one, which was fairly easy to find. We found it, but couldn't retrieve it just yet because there were “muggles” about. As soon as the muggles left, we took out the cache and signed the logbook.
We headed back to Dave's to do laundry, hang it out on the line, and then promptly go to bed. Joe noticed as we were headed to bed that I was feeling down and so, just like him, he suddenly got me excited, saying we should go steal some grapes from the vineyard next door. We hopped the fence, grabbed a few, and giggled our way back over the fence to eat our grapes in our new little home.
That night I had a very sad dream. Joe and I had a huge fight, which led to a break-up. Shortly afterward, he had a heart attack in the mall and he couldn't be revived. He was taken away in an ambulance. My heart was broken and I sank into a depression, but then suddenly a friend told me, “Didn't you hear? They were able to revive him in the ambulance!” I was so excited that I put my friend over my shoulder to go to the hospital to see him.
Sunday (the 16th of February) was our last chance for relaxing as we got to enjoy the internet and make the unit ours.
Starting Monday, we were picking apples. This involved buckets with soft cloth bottom. You pick a bucketful of apples and then unhook the cloth, which turns into a nice little chute that the fruit can roll down. We had to be very careful because apples bruise easily, so they needed babied.
They gave us a small introduction to the work (how to use the three-legged ladder, how to treat the apples with care, how to pull the apples off the trees) and then we went to it. The price that they were paying for a bin (a wooden crate perhaps 5x5x4 feet) was $30. Geoff (the owner of the orchard) and Andrew (the contractor who was technically our boss) said that beginners would probably average 4 bins per day, which would be just above minimum wage. They led us to believe that if we worked hard, we could make lots of money, but within a few days, we realized how impossible that would have been. The contract we had signed said we were entitled to AT LEAST minimum wage, meaning that if we picked three or fewer bins in a day, Andrew topped that off so we got at least minimum wage. To his credit, this was all legal in an area of the country where scheming against the foreigners was common practice.
To make matters worse, they had us working in pairs, which pitted us against one another. As much as I try to staunchly deny it, I physically can't keep up with Joe. My body isn't made for it. Sure, I could have big muscles and an even bigger power of will, but at the end of the day, I weigh less than Joe and just on this factor alone, I can't compete because I don't have as much bulk and weight to throw huge buckets of fruit around and up and down ladders.
And it took its toll on our relationship. The situation was complex between us. I can't throw the same weight around, which made me a little slower. Joe saw every second of rest as waste and started to resent the fact that if I picked slower, he would have to pick extra fast to make up for what I couldn't do. And in turn, I became resentful that I was being treated like a subsidized slacker. To make matters worse, Joe would talk and laugh and joke with the Argentinians on one side and Italians on the other, but any exchange of words with me was to say, “you're really doing it like that?” Eventually I was looking for ways to escape from the resentment and I started listening to podcasts (Stuff You Should Know, mostly). This brought out even more sighs and irritation, but I didn't have to hear it (thank you, noise-canceling earbuds).
By Thursday morning after many furtive glances, probing questions about efficiency, and a general show of frustration, I had had enough. He had even started openly criticizing the way I was picking, climbing ladders, and sorting. I firmly suggested (read: demanded) we pick our own bins because I was tired of feeling like a pity case, a welfare moocher, or a lazy bum. I was working hard and I was not willing to take any more crap from Joe. He felt like the situation was unfair because he was subsidizing me. I was hurt primarily because I don't like admitting my weaknesses like that (she flies with her own wings, damnit!) and secondarily because I resented being some sort of charity pity case whose work would never be comparable to his.
We were right in the middle of the day, so switching to a bin each instead of a bin between the two of us would have been complicated to explain to Geoff (the farmer and owner of the orchard) and Andrew (our boss, the contractor). We continued the way we were until the end of the day.
In our relationship, there haven't been very many moments where I take a hard line about something. Joe and I are reasonable human beings and we're good at give and take. This was one of the first moments in our relationship where I held my ground. And boy did I hold it. We spent an hour sitting in the grocery store parking lot discussing fruit picking and its effect on us. I felt like one of the big fountain fireworks; a burning display of fire and light. I was so mad at what the job had done to us and was unwilling to continue working with someone who saw me as a drain on him. The one day we had gotten 4 bins each (8 between the two of us), we had worked our guts out, and no matter what the tangible difference between our productivity was, I had worked my guts out just like he had worked his out.
After an hour of the burn in my eyes, we came to a better understanding and to Joe's high credit, he apologized and we were going to try to not be pitted against one another anymore. I was still so angry that even once we had gotten in the store, I had to have a hug and shed a couple of tears before the anger would slow down.
And thank goodness we reconciled, because on the second climb up the ladder the next morning, I fell off of it. I remember being 2 or 3 rungs from the top, losing my balance, thinking to myself “oh crap, but I suppose there's no stopping it now,” and relaxing into the fall. I remember looking down, seeing a branch come at me, and then hitting the ground with the bucket of apples landing on my chest.
I must have cried out or something, because before I even had time to process what had happened, Joe was yelling and racing to my side. I could tell he was scared and I was scared too, so I laid still and started wiggling parts of my body. Everything was still working, but Joe was still scared because I was eerily calm. I was really just doing the rounds on my muscles and nerves to see what worked. It all moved like it should have.
The pulled the bucket and apples off of me and slowly sat me up. Geoff told me to take a break and “have a smoke” if I needed one. I felt fine, though there was tightness in my neck. When I was a baby, I dove out of the bed of a pickup truck onto concrete, and my dad always said, “thank goodness she landed on her head or she mighta hurt something!” Well, thank goodness my neck broke my fall on that branch I had watched get closer and closer in utterly forgettable slow-motion.
The rather interesting Kiwi (a dude in his thirties who had survived cancer and had an Asian wife/girlfriend) later picked a fight with Geoff about his “first aid” protocol of having me take a smoke break. I'm the sort of person who secretly likes positive attention, but regrets attention paid for things like falling off ladders and making a big scene, so it was frustrating to hear that it had caused a fight. I don't like stirring shit up, as it were.
With such a turbulent week for our relationship, it renewed my faith in us to see how Joe handled the whole thing. He was scared out of his mind for me and baby-ed me when I needed it. He told Geoff and Andrew he'd like to get my neck checked out by a doctor. The doctor found nothing to be worried about, but there was a weird moment where he didn't want to classify it as a work injury, because of “red tape.” Perhaps there really was much more paperwork and hassle thanks to the accident insurance that all employees in NZ are covered by, but I couldn't help feeling suspicious, especially when Andrew asked which doctor we had gone to and knew him on a first name basis. I'm sure it was not a problem, but I was still worried about getting taken advantage of.
Joe kept telling me he loved me and he was thankful I was okay. He was very, very thankful that we had resolved our issues the night before, as he would have felt like the worst person in the world if I had been rushing to work harder due to pressure from him. If he was thankful that I didn't paralyze myself, I was a hundred times more thankful that I wasn't paralyzed, and that I had someone to look after me.
Within an hour of the whole dive-off-a-tall-ladder incident, Joe and I were discussing whether the job was worth the money. Sure, we were making okay money, but at what cost? Was it worth the exposure and risk of climbing up and down ladders, stretching just a little farther to get one more apple at the end of an arm's length, and the light verbal abuse from the orchard owner—another story entirely. We agreed to search for something else while continuing work at the orchard.
The slightly crazy Kiwi with his Asian wife started getting louder and louder, and we slowly watched the whole orchard start to stir with discontent. I distrusted the Kiwi, but was still feeling played. We were working our guts out for minimum wage doing work that wasn't really fun.
Kiwis are interesting people. They're almost a little predictable and sort of have this half-hint way of expressing themselves, sort of easing themselves into passive-aggressive suggestions. Geoff the orchard owner was no exception. He had this huge bottom lip constantly stuck out dumbly like Bubba from the movie Forest Gump, and he always drove around his smelly, oily tractor. He would look at our bin and use indirect speech to communicate what he wanted us to do. Instead of saying, “Emily and Joe, I see your bin has a lot of green apples in it. I would like you to please pick only the red ones and leave green ones on the tree,” he would instead bumble about and eventually say, “There's a lot of green ones in here, eh? I think we only want red ones. We don't want to pick the green ones, or else the bins will get full of green ones.”
Since we were working our guts out to even finish enough bins to meet minimum wage, some of his requests seemed plainly stupid. Babying the apples and sorting them was basically him asking us to make less money so he could make more. There was no incentive to sort or baby them because the more time we spent doing so would mean we would fill bins slower.
To make matters worse, the number of bins were all lumped together by week for the pay, which meant that we would have to get 4 bins or more each and every day to be paid more than minimum wage for the week. This meant that our first week when we were getting 2 and 3 bins the first few days, every day that week would be spent catching the toll up. If we got 2 bins the first day, we would have had to get 6 bins the second day in order to break even, much less make more than minimum wage. The Kiwi told us that the reason we were having trouble was that the orchard had lousy trees and small fruit. Some rows of trees were better than others, so if you got stuck on one of the bad rows, the average for bins for the week was shot.
At first we were naive and worried mostly about pleasing bosses and picking enough to continue to hold the job (if you were VERY slow and Andrew had to top up your pay a lot just to make minimum wage, he would terminate your employment because he “couldn't just give money away for free, but more on that later). Very quickly and with the help of the Kiwi—the Instigator—we stopped caring and learned to look out for ourselves.
After the fall from the ladder, Joe did most of the high stuff, which I was thankful for. Again, it's pretty tough to sling around full buckets of apples when I don't have as much weight to counter-balance it.
We became friends with most of the pickers, as always happens. The oppressed feel united under an oppressor. :)
We started giving the three Italians rides to and from work, even though it was pretty out of our way to do so. We asked for about half of what they were paying for a bus, which was more than enough to cover our gas for the day, plus we got to hang out with them at the end of the day.
The Italians are jovial and passionate. Every Italian I have ever met has the outer shell of the loud, wine-drinking Italian of cliches, but inside they seem to have a deeper understanding of humanity that is surprising in its depth. We started sitting together in their apartment in the evening sun drinking Italian coffee with cookies and discussing life. I saw Derek look at and speak about Martina the way Joe looks at and speaks about me and I felt flattered all over again through their connection. The connection between Joe and I is nothing if not flattering to us both.
The third Italian, Mierco, is sweet, but maybe a little slow. His speech is just slightly impaired and he has a little bit of a hunch to his back. Martina and Derek tell us he eats nothing but chocolate and cookies—all packaged food. This is really frustrating because it really is his choice, but it is scary to see someone kill themselves slowly in front of you. Mierco isn't going to die soon, but the processed food is not doing him any favors. He's skinny and pale and always looks a little weak or troubled. He's so sweet, but we would love to see him change some of his eating habits.
Martina does not speak more than a few words of English, but she understands a lot. Derek's English was choppy at first, but has slowly become more flexible and confident. We enjoy learning a little bit of Italian from them.
The Argentinians (Nicolas and Jesus) are also super nice. South Americans are so damn tranquil. We really enjoyed them.
Early in our second week we got a call from Peter and Colleen's son-in-law Grant from Dargaville. His farm would be starting digging kumara (sweet potatoes) by the 3rd of March. We asked if he had room for a couple of Italians and told him we would give him an answer by mid-week. By Wednesday we had given our three day notice as prescribed in the contract we signed. The crazy Kiwi and his wife had already abandoned the sinking ship and a day after we and the Italians quit, so did the Argentinians. All week pickers had been taking one look at the size and frequency of the apples and peaches we were picking and turning on their heels and leaving, even though by doing so they were violating the 3 day notice rule in the contract, meaning they were losing any pay they had earned in the last three days. All in all, I think the exodus was something like eight couples—sixteen people—who left.
The morning after we gave Andrew our three day notice, Geoff's abuse got a little worse. Where he made passive-aggressive comments before, he was now making outright aggressive comments. He would examine our bin and yell, "Stop picking the green ones--you're just wasting my time!" He kept yelling at Joe when he would see a few peaches Joe had missed, probably feeling powerful and justified. If we climbed up to get every last peach off of the tree, there is no way we would be able to pick even half of the number necessary to make minimum wage. He treated us as if we were stupid, even going so far as to pick with us in order to show us how it was done. I am happy to admit that he went at exactly the same speed that we did and had at least as many green or bad ones as we did.
There was one point on our last day where he said, "Man, I went to the United States and thought everyone was so nice, but then I come back here to New Zealand.." and trailed off suggestively, to which Joe continued, "and there are Americans here who are assholes?" To which Geoff gave a nasty laugh and said, "you said it, not me." At the end of it, he shook our hands, but offered nothing more, which was fine by me. I had detached. To give credit where it's due, Joe kept a level head the whole time Geoff was abusive. I was very happy and proud of him for that, and I only hope that my silence is good enough in return, because silence is the only way I can hide the blatant dislike.
The worst part about the whole experience was feeling like Geoff and Andrew knew this was coming. We heard Geoff talking to Andrew asking for more pickers, as if he were asking for more paper towels in a public restroom--like we were expendable and replaceable. It was frustrating that by quitting we weren't really sending him a message, because he could replace us as easy as could be with more foreigners whose naivete would give the orchard a week or two of work before another strike happened.
It sort of went back to a couple of things Andrew said... first, he said that he couldn't just give money away for free. In an economy, money is exchanged for work--a swap of value for value. But what people miss many times is that the equation also goes the other way. A producer has limited money and can't give it away, but the worker has limited man hours and also can't give those hours and that work away. Money is exchanged for work while work is exchanged for money. And I was not prepared to hurt, maim, or kill myself doing a job that went under-appreciated monetarily and otherwise.
Second, Andrew said to us once that he had a hard time dealing with backpackers because the backpackers were "like the wind." After our experience, it got me thinking--did the contractors and orchard owners treat us like dirt because we were unreliable like the wind coming in and out; or were backpackers like the wind because we are treated like dirt? Which came first, the chicken or the proverbial hen?
Another reason we hated and needed to get out of the orchard situation. Joe and I are good people and hard workers. We're willing to stick to something and see it through and we've always had great glowing recommendations from employers. We would have been loyal and hard-working, but we certainly won't be if it goes unrewarded and even punished. Andrew and Geoff missed out on two great people, if you can excuse the narcissism.
We were so glad to get out, though we were going to miss our “landlord” Dave. We liked our little room, getting to be part of his revolving door of constant couch surfers, and getting to have as many talks as we wanted with him.
After our last day of work, we organized a barbecue at Dave's house. First we went into town to spend the money we had won (we being Dave, Joe, an American girl, and a very interesting sort-of American young man) at the pub playing Trivia. We had gotten second place, so we got a little bit of spending money to drink.
Afterwards we went back to the house where we cooked pounds and pounds and pounds of chicken and steak. We had the three Italians, two Taiwanese, one American, one sort-of American, two Argentinians, one British (Dave, though a longtime citizen of New Zealand, actually really came from Scheffield in England) and Joe and I. We had brought everyone together and it felt amazing to know that everyone was mixing and smiling and laughing. There were many languages being spoken and if all else failed, they mimed. It was one of those nights where the clocks don't work, or if they do, no one cares.
It was a beautiful wrap-up to our mixed bag that was Hawke's Bay. We stayed up until 4 in the morning, talked, drank, and ate until the slow blink got longer and longer. We took the Italians home (we would pick them up the next morning) and returned to Dave's to discuss life with the Argentinians, who talked about humanity with depth and breadth and a warm sense of acceptance. I realized how much I had missed South Americans, especially when they gave me the customary cheek kiss. Don't get the wrong idea, it's an innocent kiss, but after a night of deep talk, it spoke to me saying I had found another friendly soul in the world.
We went to bed for a few hours, anxiously looking forward to heading off on the next part of the job adventure. We were sad to leave Dave, but looking forward to seeing Peter and Colleen again, who had offered to put us up for a little bit until we figured out where to live. It was good to be on the move again and getting out of a situation that was nothing but bad for us!
1 comment:
Good writing and photos, Em! Careful with those ladders. I'm excited to see what happens(ed) next. :)
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