Day 9: The Gardner is a Gardener

I am in pain - the sunburn on my back is killing me. After the fresh aloe vera, I thought it would be on the way to be being cured. But no! It´s very red and covered in tiny blisters at its best.


Breakfast is very rubbery scrambled eggs and bacon? and bread dried out in the oven which they call toast. Juice is packet passion fruit because Jack who was on breakfast duty with Irina didn´t get up late until 6:30 and therefore there wasn´t enough time to squeeze all the oranges. I poke fun at him that I need all the Vitamin C I can get because of my cold but it falls on deaf ears (his, not mine!)


We meet at 8 am for work allocation. I volunteer for production, which means machete work clearing the weeds away from around existing plants so they can grow better. Miguel shows us the baby plants and Irina is the star pupil naming most of them.

Miguel tells me to pick tomatoes whilst all the others do machete work. I´m not disappointed. I´m happy to be doing easier work today with my sore back. However, it´s not so easy picking tomatoes from plant after plant in the sweaty heat of the early morning. When I´ve finished, I have an orange box full of normal size tomatoes and a 5 litre water container full of cherry tomatoes.


There are green peppers and pineapples growing in the same area.

I´d quite like to go for a lie-down but I have to join the others to clear weeds and couch grass away from more mature pineapple plants and Noni plants. It´s very hot work and I´m not doing well today...remember I have a cold too...it´s hard to cut through grass with a machete.

We have a half-hour break and Jesse cuts down a huge papaya and we eat it with oranges and passionfruit.

I discover my Paramo cargo pants don´t like the serrated-edged leaves of the pineapple and I get a few snags down one leg. Still, that´s nothing compare to Irina as she cuts into her jeans and her knee with her machete. Luckily, it´s not too deep although there is blood but the wound soon sticks back together!

I now realise when you see people in documentaries working together gathering or preparing food why they sing or talk. It´s a community thing, where you gossip or share knowledge or try to put the world to rights. Unlike cleaning data (day job) where you have to concentrate, manual labour requires little or no grey matter and it´s good to talk. I am in my element! Having said that, it is so peaceful here it´s a crime to break the silence with idle (or intelligent) chit-chat!

It´s so hot and humid I´ve already abandoned my hat and it just gets in the way and my sunglasses too as it´s not that bright and they steam up when I´m working. I´d quite like to roll up my sleeves but I´d get bitten more than I am already despite my efforts at prevention.

After lunch I take to a hammock for the first time and do a little writing but as I´m feeling rather unwell, I quickly fall asleep.

Next thing I know I wake and 2 hours have gone by and I was snoring wasn´t I? Jesse is fighting hard not to laugh but within seconds he explodes with hysteria. He can´t get over the noise I made from someone so quiet (some people actually think I´m quiet?? I guess they´ve only known me a week!) Apparently they tried everything to stop me snoring but nothing worked. Jesse feels sorry for my family and Irina is grateful I have a mandibular advancement device to wear at night. She had no idea my snoring was a real problem.

At 2 pm it´s time to volunteer for the afternoon´s work. I really want something easy and I get the chance to make coffee. It´s actually quite a manual task but really rewarding. Between six of us, we make a big pot of ground coffee and it takes two hours. Jatun Sacha sell it to the homeward-bound volunteers for $10 a kilo and it tastes really good.


Afterwards, I get called to pick oranges as I´m on breakfast duty tomorrow. We have to pick 100 because of the teachers also being here. It takes three of us an hour and it´s hot and painful work due to the fire/lion ants coming down on us every time we shake the branches. We have to juice them all tomorrow between 6 and 7 am. Can´t wait!

Each meal blends into the next. Mostly it´s yellow rice, yellow because it's cooked with butter, potatoes, some kind of protein, fish beef stew or chicken, eggs, lentils or beans plus salad: raw red onions, tomatoes and cucumber, white cabbage. And always juice. I´m getting tired of it now. Citrus isn´t that kind to me so I´m drinking more water nowadays. As hot boiled water isn´t that readily available I´ve not had a single cup of the green tea I brought. Occasionally we get coffee if enough has been roasted and ground, which it has today of course.

It feels like the teachers have taken over the station. They are everywhere, ooh-ing and aah-ing over this plant or that moth or bird and some have binoculars/cameras permanently slung around their necks taking pictures of anything that moves or doesn´t.

We have a bonfire and they even take over that with their music and singing. Mind you, they are very good at it. I'm obviously just jealous. In the end, the volunteers go to bed early with the taste of sour grapes in their mouths. The teachers obviously haven´t learned the social skills required when coming to bed very late and having to keep the noise down so as not to wake the whole house. The stomp around in their muddy boots making the floors messy for us in the morning.

Everybody will be very glad when they´re gone and life here will get back to normal.