© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

He sat with his finger on the trigger the whole time. Richard was still in a deep sleep, I decided to try and join him, I couldn’t sleep, so I watched the scenery pass by.

YESHA

Eventually we arrived at our destination, we were in Yesha. We stepped off of the bus expecting to see someone waiting for us, there was no one. We waited for a long time in the baking sun, there was no shade to shelter in. We decided to start walking, we saw some houses and fields of crops, so we headed in that direction. We saw a man tinkering in a garden, and asked him where our family lived. He gave us directions, and we found our family’s home. We were met at the gate by their eldest son, apparently he was supposed to meet us from the bus, I guess he didn’t feel like it. He took us inside to meet his mother, Yudit. The family’s home was a large two storey newly built house, in the style of a Mediterranean villa. The interior was light, modern and nicely furnished. We were hot and thirsty from the walk, Yudit brought a tray into the lounge and offered us some lemonade and lemon meringue pie. The lemonade was home made and deliciously sharp, perfect with the sweetness of the pie. We sat on large soft sofas in the lounge talking to Yudit, and then her husband came in, Moshe. Both Yudit and Moshe were very friendly and welcoming, they told us we could use their telephone to call our parents anytime, swim in their swimming pool, and they would like it if we ate dinner with them at the weekends. Once we had finished our drinks, they explained a little about our working hours and what we would be doing. We left their home and walked to our accommodation, it was adjacent to their house. It was a very basic one storey building, constructed with breeze blocks, the exterior was rendered, the roof was a couple of sheets of corrugated iron, on top of which stood a small water tank. The front door led straight into the open plan kitchen and dining room. It was average size, and the floor was tiled. Off of this room was a bathroom, with a shower, no bath, and two bedrooms. Our bedroom was fairly large with a double bed and not much else. The other bedroom had two single beds, and was in use. We didn’t have to work that day, as there wasn’t much of it left. We made ourselves at home and waited for the other Moshav volunteers to arrive back from work. First home was Laurent, a young man of about 18 from Switzerland. He was very friendly, and told us lots about the Moshav, Yudit, Moshe, and his life in Switzerland. He had wanted to visit Israel to experience something different. Next home was Egar, a Russian Jew, he was a sad looking man. He was in his late twenties and didn’t speak any English. He said that he had come to Israel to be with his people. It wasn’t exactly working out how he had hoped, and the situation only got worse, much worse, more of which later. Yudit had given us some basic food supplies, bread, yogurt and cheese. Laurent gave us some lovely fresh tomatoes, he had spent the day picking them. So that was our dinner taken care of. Laurent went to bed early, about 10pm, he said we all had to be up ready to start work at 7am the next morning. Richard, Egar and I sat up playing cards and drinking Vodka. I know, drinking Vodka with a Russian guy, what a clichÈ! The truth is we drank lots and lots of Vodka during our time at the Moshav, not because we were in the company of a Russian, but because it was unbelievably cheap. It wasn’t that much more expensive than bottled water, crazy! After a late night we were surprisingly lively the next morning, well we were so much younger then! Now I rarely rise before lunchtime, although Richard is up and about hours before me, well someone has to prepare our lunch! Laurent was finishing breakfast, we didn’t eat anything, we grabbed four two litre bottles of water and threw them in a bag. Then we all went outside where Moshe picked us up in an old Peugeot pickup van. Laurent sat in the cab with him, Egar, Richard and myself sat in the open back. The early morning air was so cold, and sitting on the hard cold metal of the wheel arches didn’t make us feel any warmer. Moshe drove like a bat out of hell, we were bouncing up and down all over the place. The land owned by the family was quite spread out and vast. We were taken quite some distance on rough bumpy tracks, then across a road to an orchard of apple trees. This was where we would be spending the next few days, picking apples. Moshe showed us which apples to pick, they had to be a certain size and colour. We were given buckets and left to it. After we had filled a couple of buckets each, Yudit arrived in the family’s fairly new four door Peugeot saloon. She looked at the apples we had emptied from our buckets into the huge crates at one end of the row of trees. She was not impressed, she told us so in no uncertain terms, I thought maybe she wasn’t a morning person! She showed us again exactly which apples we should be picking, not too big, not too small, and with a hint of red on the skins. They were green apples, can’t remember which variety, but they had a slight red tinge to them, or so Yudit said, I couldn’t see it. Once she was happy that we would only be picking the best apples from now on, she disappeared. We spent the next few days picking apples, and Yudit spent those same few days telling us that we were doing it wrong. The apples we picked were either too small, too large, too green, or just too much like apples picked by us! She was very hard to please, but we were beginning to get seriously fit, so we tried our best to ignore her nasty personality. We soon learned that no matter what we did, she didn’t like it, it wasn’t good enough. Laurent could do no wrong, he picked perfect apples, which funnily enough looked exactly like the apples we picked, I guess they would considering they were picked from the same trees! Most of the fruit trees were planted in soft sandy ground, not surprising as we were in the middle of the desert. The trees were all watered by an automatic irrigation system. We worked alongside Egar and Laurent and various other employees. As well as us volunteers, Yudit and Moshe employed lots of Palestinians. When we had been working with two of the Palestinian men for a while, they began to talk to us more. Initially they had been wary of us, but now they were very friendly and so generous. They had so little and yet they would always insist on sharing their lunch with us, often peeling some delicious prickly pears to share. With all of the fruit and vegetables we were eating we were definitely keeping healthy. Our bodies were really showing signs of change too, from walking in the deep soft sand underfoot, carrying the overflowing buckets of fruit, one in each hand, and emptying them into the large crates at the end of the aisles of trees. This was an amazing workout, and although we ended each working day completely shattered, we also felt so good. We used to work from 7am until 4pm, stopping for an hour for lunch, six days a week. Richard and I would go back to the accommodation for our lunch, Laurent and Egar usually sat in the shade of whatever field they were working in to eat. We would eat bread, cheese, and cold meats, as well as lots of the lovely sweet tomatoes grown on the farm. We were allowed to eat as much of the produce grown on the farm as we liked. There was a small grocery shop within the Moshav compound, which we were taken to the day after we arrived. Moshe gave us a lift in his van, we decided to walk back as we wanted to take our time choosing what foods to buy. When we went to pay, the store owner wouldn’t take our money, we didn’t understand why. Then he explained that no one paid for their food when they purchased it, they paid at a later date, and that Yudit would pay our bill from our wages direct to him. We signed for our food and left. We bought quite a lot on that first visit, and struggled to carry it the short distance back to the accommodation. It wasn’t because it was too heavy, but because the sun was beating down with a vengeance. After that first shop, we were not happy with the idea of eating food that we hadn’t paid for, and we went to speak to Yudit about it. She wasn’t happy when we told her that in future we would be paying for our food when we purchased it. She said it was not normal, and begrudgingly agreed to inform the shop owner. From then on we always paid for our grocery’s in cash at the time of purchase. A couple of weeks after we began this, Yudit called us into her home, she said we were spending too much on food and alcohol. She had copies of the receipts, and went through every item, telling us that we didn’t need this, and we shouldn’t have bought that! We were surprised to say the least, why did she care what we ate? It was all very weird, and nothing ever came of it. We continued to buy what we wanted. She had mentioned that we were spending practically all of the wages she was giving us, which we were, but why did she care? It wasn’t as if we were being paid that much anyway, and we had to eat. Laurent hardly spent any money at the shop, he used to eat a huge plate of tomatoes for breakfast, for lunch he would eat some bread, and then in the evening he would eat another huge plate of tomatoes. He said he was trying to save some money for when he left the Moshav.

Oceania