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.