© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

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

As we were thanking them for the evening and getting ready to leave, Yudit said that as were still upset we didn’t have to start work so early tomorrow, we could start at 8am instead of 7am! Earlier in the day she had said we could have the day off, typical! Oh well, I guess it was better to keep busy. Now that Richard and I were the only volunteers, it was time to send for replacements. A couple of days later Moshe told us we were getting new room mates, a couple, an American man and a French women. Next to our block was another block, it was unfinished but much nicer than ours. Moshe told us we could move in there if we wanted to when the new couple arrived, we said yes. Almost a week later, our new roommates arrived. They were older than we expected, Bob was in his mid to late thirties, and Marie was a little younger than him. Bob was very friendly, Marie was much quieter. Apparently Moshe told them that they could move into the nicer block too, neither of us ever did! When they first arrived we were all working together picking nectarines. Yudit had warned us not to tell them about Egar and the way he died. We didn’t at first, it’s not the kind of conversation you greet strangers with, but later when things came to a head again, we decided they needed to know. We were all more or less happy working together, which Yudit and Moshe didn’t seem to like, so they split us all up. I now had to work with Marie, whist Richard was with Bob. After a while Bob suggested that we all start work at 5am and work straight through to 1pm. We didn’t eat breakfast so we wouldn’t have to get up that early, Bob and Marie liked to eat breakfast so they got up at 4am! Moshe was fine with this new arrangement, he didn’t care as long as we all worked eight hours a day. It took us a few days to get used to the new hours, we liked it. It was so much cooler for that first hour or so, and it was nice being finished by 1pm, we had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted. As we were in the middle of the desert there wasn’t that much to do, but there was a very small shopping centre about twenty minutes walk away. I say shopping centre, but it was no more than about three shops inside a huge concrete block. It was nice to see something different though, and get away from the farm. Bob had been told by Yudit that we could all have the same day off, we were allowed one a fortnight. She said we could take her car and drive to Be'er Sheva. She told us that there was a large shopping centre there and it would make a nice day out for us, we could have lunch and do some shopping. We were all looking forward to this, but as expected it never materialised. The same as Bob being told he could drive us to the Moshav grocery shop in the van, to make it easier for us to get our goods home in the searing heat, that only happened once, and then we all got told off for taking too long! As harsh as Yudit and Moshe were, we were all enjoying being on the Moshav. I guess it was nice to be away from home, and to be doing something different. We spent every evening relaxing outside the front of our accommodation block, there was a wooden bench and table to sit at. As the daylight faded, and the sky turned completely black it was filled with hundreds of stars. We didn’t get to see a sight like that too often in London, because of all of the pollution. We would sit under the blanket of stars talking and playing with the farms many dogs. Yudit and Moshe had quite a few dogs which were lovely, but not very well cared for. One in particular was a dog they said they had found running along the main road. They had rescued him and brought him home to live with them. I’m not sure of the breed, he was quite small, and he had a tangly mop of white hair. He used to spend most evenings with us when we finished work. They had another dog, an alsatian that they kept chained up as a guard dog, another large dog similar to a boxer dog, and a small terrier of some kind, he seemed to be Yudit’s favourite, he was clean and slept in their house. They didn’t seem to feed the dogs on anything more than bread and water. They would chuck whole loaves of bread out on the ground for the dogs. They were all very underweight, some of which was due to the heat, as they were always running around acting mad. One day when Richard and I came walking home from work, a tiny little ball of fluff came running up to us, we had a new puppy. He was brown and so soft and friendly, he was gorgeous, we named him Alvin. I don’t think he belonged to Yudit’s family, it was hard to know as there were so many dogs all over the Moshav. We were happy to look after him, it was good to have something to smile about again, after our recent sadness. Although we were still very sad after the death of Egar, life seemed good with Bob there. Not everything was good though, I was not a morning person when we stayed at the Moshav, I’m not much better now. I’m not bad, I just didn’t like to talk first thing in the mornings, for some reason this annoyed Marie. We didn’t get on with each other, so we agreed to be polite and nothing more, it worked for us. All four of us enjoyed the work though, we spent lots of time together, and Richard built a BBQ out of old bricks he found nearby. One evening all four of us were enjoying some delicious chicken cooked by Richard, I had made some potato salad, Marie had made some ratatouille, and Bob was helping with the cooking. We must have been having too much fun, because Moshe came round and told us that we had to put out the BBQ, and that we had ruined his bricks. Unbelievable! Oh well, we didn’t rise to it, we just carried on enjoying our dinner. The next day whilst we were out working Moshe dismantled the BBQ, and he chucked the bricks all over the ground where we had found them, that’s how precious they were! By now we had done almost everything on the farm. We had picked lots of different fruits, lots of vegetables, and cut flowers. Richard and I were interested to know what we would be doing next, it turned out to be a very cushy job. We were both sent to a shed to cut the stems of the flowers, they all had to be uniform. Bob and Marie were pulling up weeds out in the open under the boiling sun. Once we had filled several buckets with the flowers, we were told to place the buckets of flowers inside the refrigerated room within the shed. Obviously we looked forward to opening this huge cool room, although the shed was fairly cool, the air that wafted out as we opened the refrigerated room door was bliss. We weren’t naughty, we didn’t open it unnecessarily, and we closed it as soon as we had put the buckets in. However this didn’t stop Moshe from telling us off, he accused us of leaving the door open to cool ourselves down. Yudit also had a problem with us, she said we were cutting the flowers the wrong length. There were two wooden benches in the shed with various markings on them, we had to lay the flowers down and cut them at the length Yudit had shown us. We were cutting them correctly, she was just never happy. After a few days in our new easy job Yudit decided to move us again, now we were working with Bob and Marie, and our two Palestinian friends. We were stripping down all the dead leaves left behind from the tomatoes in one of the greenhouses. We weren’t allowed to use gloves, and we all ended up with blisters and nasty cuts on our hands. After that we were chopping down the dead remains of flowers that had not been suitable for sale. This greenhouse was so different now from when Richard and I had cut the flowers. There were lots of spiders crawling all over the ground. After a while we got used to them walking all over us. Alvin our little puppy always came to work with us, he loved it. Our Palestinian friends didn’t like him though, they said dogs are dirty, Alvin didn’t take it personally! Every time Alvin touched them, they used to wash themselves with plain water. They said they had to use a certain amount, I think it was seven or eight ounces. Apart from that Alvin was loved by us all, except for two of Yudit’s sons. They used to say nasty things about him and threatened to kill him. Sadly one day, they did just that, they ran him over with their quad bike. We saw them as we were walking home from a field one day. They were too far ahead of us for us to do anything, and by the time we reached them, Alvin was dead. We buried Alvin, and later that evening the boys came round to say sorry the puppy was dead, they said he had been poisoned. We told them we had seen them run him over, and they denied it, saying he was only a dog anyway! This was not the nicest family you could have hoped to stay with. We were all sad about Alvin, and Bob decided to try and help the little white rescue dog. Bob used his hair clippers and got rid of all of the poor dogs matted hair. We had tried to cut the worst of it off before, but it was so dirty and thick we didn’t really make much progress. Now with the clippers the dog looked so much better, he was washed too, and we could tell he felt so much better. Richard and I were given a job working together again in a greenhouse. We had to fill hundreds of seed trays with soil, and then plant some seeds. Yudit was very specific, telling us that the seeds cost a fortune, and we mustn’t put more than one in each pot, and to be careful not to drop any. We loved this job, it was great, we got to sit down most of the day, except for when we had to mix the huge sacks of soil with the sand.

Oceania