Day 10: Too many or too few breakfasts??

I am on breakfast duty, which is a bummer. This is the only meal duty that requires orange picking the day before thus encroaching on our 2 hour rest time, then getting up early to prepare the juice, then washing up after everyone else goes off to prepare for the morning work and we are still expected to do morning work with everyone else.

Today´s triple-edged sword comes in the shape of the teachers and those volunteers leaving early to work on the community project.

I have to be in the kitchen at 6 am to squeeze 100 oranges with two others. It´s a boring, wrist-aching, sticky job. You have to sieve the pulp and pips. It´s a ridiculous waste of man-hours: 3 of us taking 1 hour. It´s one time when electricity surely should be used?

Remember I mentioned on an earlier posting under "Questions" that electricity is sporadic? Not so! There is electricity. The wiring probably wouldn´t pass EU guidelines but then the same could be said of mainland Ecuador from my own experience. Some lights don´t function as a result but could also be because rats are known to gnaw through the cables!

I digress...

We dish up breakfast for the first sitting at 7 am to those going off early across the island to machete mora in the community. I am surprised and they are mortified to be given one very small piece of walnut cake each and a plate of watermelon and papaya to share. To be expected to carry out a day´s work on such meagre rations generates much anger from the Canadians and American volunteers. And I can´t blame them.

When the teachers turn up along with the remaining volunteers for breakfast the volunteers are made to sit and wait while the teachers, who also get cake, eat theirs. Finally, when the teachers leave for their day´s "expedition" with Cesare, the volunteers get their breakfast...but because the cake has been already been eaten a hastily thrown together pot of porridge is cooked. There is a lot of complaining: "Why can´t we have cake?? It´s not fair!!" Seems like nobody wins on the choice of breakfast today.

I really don´t like this duty. It´s worse than being a housewife. The washing-up of utensils never seems to end (the volunteers have to wash their own dishes but breakfast duty people have to dry up) and I have wrinkly fingers by the time I´ve finished. I have to run back to the house to get changed to work in the nursery (plants, not children) but by the time I get there at 09:30 the work is done - bagging up composted soil into single pot-size plastic bags.

In the absence of Miguel, Lydia or Cesare, we sit and weed and talk. I feel sorry for Marten, the only male in the group as the tone is most definately lowered, not by me I hasten to add (for once) but by the two young Londoners.

Eventually, Lydia arrives and shows us how to cut branches off a particular endemic tree and cut each branch into foot lengths which are to be planted direct into the previously mentioned pots. A new tree will grow from each length and then each new sapling will be planted in the reforestation area where we were machete-ing trees on our first day.

We have nearly finished cutting when we are called in for lunch and this piece of work does not get finished until another day.

After lunch and our siesta we meet at 2 pm to finish what we started this morning but are told there is no more work today, and as it´s raining again we return to the house. I take the opportunity to have an early shower and catch up with my journal. I have not been doing terribly well with this as there´s so much to do and see and people to talk to.

Then there´s the bar...so after supper we walk in the mud 10 minutes down the road. While we are there, the teachers return with Cesare and he joins us at the bar and announces he´ll be away with them now until Thursday as he´s going to Santa Cruz. I need to talk to him before I leave about specifics on the station that aren´t covered by our day to day work but I´m getting the feeling this may not happen. He is a very busy man.

The music in the bar is not my thing i.e. rap, the bottles of beer are large and there´s no other choice other than rum, Coke or Fanta!!! So I head back to the station for an early night after two drinks.

I don´t know if it´s because of the booze or because I´m in a different hemisphere (just!) but I turn completely the wrong way trying to find my way out of the bar - it´s harder than it seems - there are no lights except my little head torch which I´m carrying in my hand and one path looks much the same as another...then I drop my torch and the batteries fall out and I can´t find them! I actually panic a little as although I can see the bar lit up like Blackpool, I can´t see the lay of the land - it´s just black. I could yell but despite my skills at projection I don´t think even my voice will penetrate the volume of the music.

Luckily for me, Anna, the German saw me stumbling around just before I dropped my torch and started her rescue mission. I find my batteries (no mean feat) and she points me in the right direction (I was heading towards a very steep slope just before I dropped my torch!). Three English girls walk back with me to the station and they chastise me a little for going back on my own.

For once in my life they make me feel old and stupid (okay, maybe this isn´t the first time I´ve felt stupid, but you know what I mean!!) I´m normally very independant and wouldn´t care that I was out in the middle of nowhere with a tiny torch to show me the way home but from now on, or at least walking back from the bar at Jatun Sacha, I will make sure I wait for someone else before I attempt it, at least until I get to know the area better!