ws blog

My time at the Welcome Swallow has been really fun. The days have been a little slow lately, but the nights are always fun. Usually there is fresh fish to cook (in various ways), a bonfire, communal beer (Double Brown- get it DOWN!), a hot tub on the odd occasion and usually someone making the most awesome food.

The bonfires are really fun. It is a pretty large fire circle with huge, and I mean huge, stump benches surrounding it. Imagine if Christmas trees were pointier and grew like ground covering vines. If you can picture that, then you've met gorse, a local weed that goes up in flames like my friends on a road trip. The hostel has about 30 tons of the stuff free for the burning. I've tired myself out piling it on the fire.

Double Brown (get it down) is the beer of choice in these parts. It is a cross between Keystone Light and Newcastle, with the greater than sign leaning towards the Keystone. At only 17 bucks a 20 pack, it is about 8 dollars cheaper than my favorite NZ beer so far, which is Steinlager. (~ $25 for 15 bottles). I've had good beers here in the NZ and a few good wines. That being said, the last few days have been spent in sobriety. Last night I started and finished "The Life of Pi". I really enjoyed it, but the ending threw me for a loop. I think I'll read it again sometime. Something I rarely say about any book. Excluding the LoTR and the Ian Flemming Bond series. I'm sure upon a second reading, the life of Pi will take on a bit newer and more profound meaning.

Most people here have been traveling for a long time, so they're hostel cooking skills are light years beyond mine. My meals are pretty simple. An entre and a carrot. Or one-eyed-gypies and a bowl of cereal. I've always heard that veggies are the cheapest best way to eat when traveling, and now I can see how true that is. When I walk into the store, I go straight for the peanut butter and soup aisles, the dry packaged meals section, or the cheese and crackers section. But most everyone else stops in the first area, which in any grocery store in the world is the produce section. I'm watching and learning, and I'm sure that long before I'm poor and hungry I'll be a master at cooking cheap veggies in any setting. That's the plan at least.
I'm also lucky that I'm not paying for my bed or my food here at the Welcome Swallow. Since I'm WWOOFing, I get a horde of food that I can only share with the other two WWOOFers. We have pretty near endless supplies, although they're pretty boring. I've bought some food that I know I can always turn to, like tuna, better bread, peanut butter, and stuff like that, but mostly I've been eating from the WWOOFing boxes in the pantry and the fridge. I kinda thought that the family that hosts me is supposed to cook meals for me, but that isn't the case here, and I'm not really in a position to complain or argue. There are three WWOOFers and about 15 other people here. They're all waiting for the Kerifresh Fruit company to begin their promised work.

That's the theme here. Waiting for fruit picking and packing. The promise of $12.50 an hour and 60-72 hours a week is a strong lure, but some people have been waiting for over a month, some for a week. Today was a bad day for both sets. They went to the company to finally get answers to their long avoided questions, but no answers were given and a few tempers got the better of tired and broke individuals. If I were in their position, I would be long gone by now. If you tell me that a job starts on Monday, and then it doesn't, then I'm O-U-T out. I guess the rent is cheap here if you're waiting, only $120 a week, but when you're paying that, buying food and beer and have nothing to do all day but wait for a company that is screwing you around? Hell no, Sean don't play that. The worst thing is that Kerifresh is totally exploiting these fine people. Instead of saying that they can't hire anymore people, They're lying and saying that the picking hasn't started, but it has. They just want to have a pool of workers available in case the crop takes a turn for the worst, or better, or in the case of people quitting or whatever. At first we kinda just thought that indeed the weather wasn't quite right, or the fruit wasn't ready, but now we're 90% sure that is bullshit.

But luckily for me, I just have to put in 4 hours a day working on the website. Which is coming along nicely. I think I'll be done in about a week. But don't tell anyone that.