Monday, March 22, 2010
We just finished up another wonderful 10 days of life with Carolyn and family. Unfortunately we were well organized enough back in October to book this so-called "Milford Track" so now we have to go do that. Carolyn's was productive and fun, plus it involved a birthday surprise visit by Malcolm and Lindsay who snuck their way to the South Island. Today we drive South and camp for two nights before hopefully starting Milford. Yesterday there was a giant storm in Fiordland, so right now Milford is actually closed, but they said it might be re-open by Thursday. That will be followed by a few days in Queenstown trying to set up our winter lives and then a bit more sight seeing before returning to Carolyn's for a 3 week project before moving to Queenstown for the winter. It is just starting to feel like fall and I suspect that it will turn into winter as we drive South today. That's all the time we have, folks! Hope spring is in the air in some parts.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Maggie and I continue to use the phrase "just our luck" at least 3 times a day everyday because something wonderfully lucky happens. Like pulling up to a parking space and having someone hop out of their car and hand you their parking ticket with another hour left on it. Or dropping Jacob off at the airport at the exact same time that Kota showed up there to pick up his girlfriend, so we got to run hug him goodbye! Or getting to go out on a giant catamaran with a few Germans and a Jacob to sail around the island of Auckland! You know, lucky things! That boat trip was perfectly wonderful, you should read about it more in depth on Maggie's blog. Some of the highlights included phosphorescent water at night and Julian, our German captain, diving for scallops that he promptly opened, cooked, and served. He dove for like an hour while Maggie and I worked really hard at reading our books on the catamaran's sunny nets. Best scallops I've ever tasted. It was the complete opposite of apple-picking. Julian dropped us off on the beach closest to the house where Jacob stays, but it was low tide so the dingy could only go so far, leaving a fair stretch of beach for us to wade through. Turns out, Jacob's host parents were waiting for us on the beach and so we had to meet them fresh out of the water. I found it difficult to be taken seriously when I look like I've just come from a shipwreck: I was wading calf-deep in sandy muck, wearing a bathing suit with a giant laundry sack stuffed with me and Maggie's belongings slung over my shoulder. I looked a little more like a beached mermaid who had just pillaged a lovely ship than a sweet American visitor who merits an invitation into one's home.One good reason why traveling is exhausting:
A list of where I’ve slept each night of the past week:
Day 1: caravan
Day 2: catamaranDay 3: Jacob’s host parent’s house
Day 4 AND 5: my homey Gilly and Greg bed!
Day 6: hotel in Rotorua
Day 7: caravan
Tonight: somewhere in Wellington
See?
The great news is that some of those nights were spent with the Lentz family, which made those nights a blast. I’ve included a Lentz Family Pic for your viewing pleasure. They arrived on Sunday and we took them to our favorite beach. Then they took the Shine family out for dinner where we had a lovely evening. the next day we all went to Rotorua, a town built run on geothermal energy that smells like sulphur. The smell is admittedly off-putting; however, the thermal vents, boiling mud pools, and geysers make you far more focused on your eyes than your nose. Now they are exploring the South Island and I’m making my way down in our car. We’ll have a happy reunion at Carolyn’s house in Nelson on Saturday.
lessons learned
I’ve been thinking about apple-picking a lot since stopping. This might be because I still feel the ache in my spine and can’t turn my head it’s full rotation, but I think that it is also because it has been the one unpleasant section of our time in New Zealand, so certainly there must be something to learn from it.
The most obvious lesson, which I realized early on, was that even tasks that hard have a bright side. For instance, despite that every day was really really hard work for really really poor pay, I laughed hard and long at some point every day. Living with Maggie, Malcolm and Lindsay was always fun. One day Maggie found an apple blossom still in bloom on her tree and she brought it over to me and when I smelled it it was so fresh and sweet. I realized that that was the first moment that day that I’d actually felt happy, and I was refreshed by the realization that pieces of such simple beauty can spark happiness. Thank goodness for that.
I’ve also realized another lesson with an unexpected link to my learnings during my time in South Africa. While I was in Cape Town I worked for SAEP, an organization that worked on environmental education programs in township high schools. I entered that experience gung-ho about the possibilities for environmental change after classes at Carolina that taught us how the simplest technologies and behavioral changes can lead to critical improvements in environmental health. Once I got there and started trying to teach, I realized how any unrealistic and unfair it is for us in the developed world to impress our environmental standards on those in impoverished situations. I often use the example of expecting someone who cannot afford electricity, plumbing, or clean water to invest in compact florescent light bulbs. Perhaps you could teach them to throw trash in trash cans instead of the streets, but that depends on trustworthy infrastructure and governmental organization that so many places lack. So in that case I learned through observation that poverty and environmental health are inextricably linked.
I did not expect to expand upon that lesson during my year in New Zealand. General world knowledge of NZ tends to be about sheep, Lord of the Rings, or how great it is at being Green with a capital “G.” Turns out, there are some really disappointing things, like a total lack of public recycling, that crack its Green façade. There are still many ways in which it is ahead of the U.S. in environmental health, but it isn’t perfect either. Anyway, that was more observation. Then, I started apple-picking and living in that caravan. That’s when I learned through experience how poverty lends itself to environmental negligence. (I know that my “poverty” is not comparable to most of the world’s impoverished in any realistic way, but it was close enough to generate some empathy.) It is all part of the package of being exhausted, having limited options, and sacrificing some basic principals for the necessity of making a little money. For instance, our caravan was equipped with a “kitchen” sink of sorts, but that sink drain emptied directly onto the ground outside our window. So anything that went down that drain, from water to toothpaste to oatmeal, collected in a little pile of gunk on the ground outside our window. At first this seemed disgusting and we would force ourselves into the shed sink where are least our waste was hidden from us and we could tell ourselves that it was cleanly disposed of. It is amazing how easily I can convince myself that my waste ceases to exist once I can’t see it. That worked for a few days, but as we got more and more tired we got more and more lazy. Eventually it got to the point where any waste that might go down that sink drain might as well go straight out the window. So while we sat around our caravan we’d just toss apple cores or avocado skins right out the window, leaving the outside resembling more of a caveman’s lair than a welcoming home. Sure the things we tossed were biodegradable and blah blah blah - we just know a little better than to throw the other stuff our the window. But it is that mentality that scares me. We were just one throw away from becoming people who are completely negligent of their waste because we are tired and lack proper means of disposal. Apparently “knowing better” doesn’t cut it. Just eating the apples we worked with everyday is another example. They are covered in poison and we’d just munch away because it is a free, fast option. Free and fast were the most important, because that enabled us to save money while making money (not paying for that food and being able to keep picking instead of taking a break to eat.) It wasn’t McDonald’s, but you can see how it could be in different circumstances.
What’s almost more upsetting is how that work led me to abandon my basic moral code time after time. You are only supposed to pick from your side of the tree. At first I strictly picked the apples that were clearly mine. But after my side being raided time and time again by those ahead of me on the other side, I learned that my crates filled a lot faster when I stretched across the wire a little further. I felt guilty every time, but I didn’t stop. Also, the bosses were so much nicer to us English-speaking Americans than all of the other workers. In fact they were downright nasty to most of them. But did I stick up for them ever? Did I use my powers of English for good? Nope. That would have made the bosses mean to me, made my job harder, or gotten me fired. I needed the money and made more of it when the bosses liked me, so I stayed quiet. Shame on me.
It was just incredible for me to realize the extent to which one’s behavior relates to one’s wealth. I would love to think that I care about money less than many. But that is because I usually have it. As soon as I was put in a position of desperation, I cared about money more than basic things like respect for both my peers and my environment. It makes sense, but I don’t know that I could ever have recognized that side of myself if I hadn’t lived in a way that made it surface. The thing is, I neither liked nor respected that side of myself; however, I couldn’t blame myself for it. At the time, circumstances seemed to require such behavior. My point is, I’ve got a lot to think about. Somehow I’ve been granted the powers of America, English, relative wealth, education and motivation. Figuring out how to use them is another matter entirely.
The most obvious lesson, which I realized early on, was that even tasks that hard have a bright side. For instance, despite that every day was really really hard work for really really poor pay, I laughed hard and long at some point every day. Living with Maggie, Malcolm and Lindsay was always fun. One day Maggie found an apple blossom still in bloom on her tree and she brought it over to me and when I smelled it it was so fresh and sweet. I realized that that was the first moment that day that I’d actually felt happy, and I was refreshed by the realization that pieces of such simple beauty can spark happiness. Thank goodness for that.
I’ve also realized another lesson with an unexpected link to my learnings during my time in South Africa. While I was in Cape Town I worked for SAEP, an organization that worked on environmental education programs in township high schools. I entered that experience gung-ho about the possibilities for environmental change after classes at Carolina that taught us how the simplest technologies and behavioral changes can lead to critical improvements in environmental health. Once I got there and started trying to teach, I realized how any unrealistic and unfair it is for us in the developed world to impress our environmental standards on those in impoverished situations. I often use the example of expecting someone who cannot afford electricity, plumbing, or clean water to invest in compact florescent light bulbs. Perhaps you could teach them to throw trash in trash cans instead of the streets, but that depends on trustworthy infrastructure and governmental organization that so many places lack. So in that case I learned through observation that poverty and environmental health are inextricably linked.
I did not expect to expand upon that lesson during my year in New Zealand. General world knowledge of NZ tends to be about sheep, Lord of the Rings, or how great it is at being Green with a capital “G.” Turns out, there are some really disappointing things, like a total lack of public recycling, that crack its Green façade. There are still many ways in which it is ahead of the U.S. in environmental health, but it isn’t perfect either. Anyway, that was more observation. Then, I started apple-picking and living in that caravan. That’s when I learned through experience how poverty lends itself to environmental negligence. (I know that my “poverty” is not comparable to most of the world’s impoverished in any realistic way, but it was close enough to generate some empathy.) It is all part of the package of being exhausted, having limited options, and sacrificing some basic principals for the necessity of making a little money. For instance, our caravan was equipped with a “kitchen” sink of sorts, but that sink drain emptied directly onto the ground outside our window. So anything that went down that drain, from water to toothpaste to oatmeal, collected in a little pile of gunk on the ground outside our window. At first this seemed disgusting and we would force ourselves into the shed sink where are least our waste was hidden from us and we could tell ourselves that it was cleanly disposed of. It is amazing how easily I can convince myself that my waste ceases to exist once I can’t see it. That worked for a few days, but as we got more and more tired we got more and more lazy. Eventually it got to the point where any waste that might go down that sink drain might as well go straight out the window. So while we sat around our caravan we’d just toss apple cores or avocado skins right out the window, leaving the outside resembling more of a caveman’s lair than a welcoming home. Sure the things we tossed were biodegradable and blah blah blah - we just know a little better than to throw the other stuff our the window. But it is that mentality that scares me. We were just one throw away from becoming people who are completely negligent of their waste because we are tired and lack proper means of disposal. Apparently “knowing better” doesn’t cut it. Just eating the apples we worked with everyday is another example. They are covered in poison and we’d just munch away because it is a free, fast option. Free and fast were the most important, because that enabled us to save money while making money (not paying for that food and being able to keep picking instead of taking a break to eat.) It wasn’t McDonald’s, but you can see how it could be in different circumstances.
What’s almost more upsetting is how that work led me to abandon my basic moral code time after time. You are only supposed to pick from your side of the tree. At first I strictly picked the apples that were clearly mine. But after my side being raided time and time again by those ahead of me on the other side, I learned that my crates filled a lot faster when I stretched across the wire a little further. I felt guilty every time, but I didn’t stop. Also, the bosses were so much nicer to us English-speaking Americans than all of the other workers. In fact they were downright nasty to most of them. But did I stick up for them ever? Did I use my powers of English for good? Nope. That would have made the bosses mean to me, made my job harder, or gotten me fired. I needed the money and made more of it when the bosses liked me, so I stayed quiet. Shame on me.
It was just incredible for me to realize the extent to which one’s behavior relates to one’s wealth. I would love to think that I care about money less than many. But that is because I usually have it. As soon as I was put in a position of desperation, I cared about money more than basic things like respect for both my peers and my environment. It makes sense, but I don’t know that I could ever have recognized that side of myself if I hadn’t lived in a way that made it surface. The thing is, I neither liked nor respected that side of myself; however, I couldn’t blame myself for it. At the time, circumstances seemed to require such behavior. My point is, I’ve got a lot to think about. Somehow I’ve been granted the powers of America, English, relative wealth, education and motivation. Figuring out how to use them is another matter entirely.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Time to say goodbye to apple-picking. What a shame. Yesterday was our last day. In a burst of determination (and lunacy) I wanted to beat my own record, so I picked 5 crates and then wanted to die. (See how HUGE they are?!!!)
So, goodbye rows of apple trees.
Goodbye heavy ladders I can barely lift and 800 lb. crates.
Goodbye empty bird nests tucked safely in branches of poison.
Goodbye constant scrutiny and criticism from a boss who wonders how we endure a Muslim president!
Goodbye sweaty buckets that make you stink like you’ve only ever backpacked and never ever showered.
Goodbye acute shoulder and back pain and wounds that never heal.
Goodbye 5:30 wake-up calls and 8:30 bed times.
Goodbye shoebox house with lovely friends inside and shed house of Crazians!
Now we head to Auckland for two days, during which we will get to go sailing with our friend Jacob and THEN we get to see Tom and Alice and Marc Lentz!!!! Come one, come all!
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