Life in a Packhouse

Woo Hoo!!! Our 2-week stint in a kiwi packhouse is over, we've slept a lot, & now it's time to fill you in on life in the packhouse before we move onto our next adventure. But before I do, I should just elaborate a little on the picking beforehand, because while the picking itself was hard work and the people running it a pain in the behind, we did meet some interesting people working there. Unlike the apple picking gangs who were dominated by shifty characters, those working with us were mostly travellers like ourselves. We met a delightful German couple, Mandy & Ralph, who like us gave up on picking and moved to the packhouse (though sadly a different one to us), a really intense young Czech guy, Lukas, who is taking time out from a Medics degree to walk the length and breadth of New Zealand and was happy to give us lots of helpful tramping advice, and a tattooed German hairdresser called Michelle who helped to keep me sane at breaktimes. Oh, and there was a 16 year old kid, Chris, who'd just finished school and loved to parade around in his Vinetech t-shirt and cap, trying to boss us all around - hopefully he'll soon grow up and realise that he's behaving like a total knob, maybe not, who know? But it wasn't all bad.

So, to the packhouse. Su went first and was given a fairly jammy job in Hawk, the shed dealing with green kiwis - she effectively walked into a QC job and was responsible for checking the weights, number of fruit and any blemished or damaged fruit in the boxes, then entering that information on a computer (yep, they let Su loose on a computer!!!) I was in the Eagle shed, dealing with gold kiwifruit, and I was awarded the job of grader, which meant I got to stand in one spot all day while kiwifruit rolled before me and I had to pull out all blemished or damaged fruit for the 'pig shute' or for second class. Now, standing in one spot all day hurts after a while, as does your shoulders and arms from leaning over and pulling out fruit constantly, but I stuck at it because I was paid a higher wage for grading, equivalent to Su's QC job, which made it sort of worthwhile. I was going to try and swap to Su's shed but decided against it as gold fruit was much easier to grade, slower as it bruises more easily and less to look for. This also turned out to be a good decision because while Su had much better music than me, the volume was so loud to compete with the noisy old machines that 2 weeks was enough to give you permanent hearing damage. Pardon? The flip side to that was although my shed was quieter, whoever put the music on had only 1 CD, which played over and over and over and over and over all day - if I ever hear Whitney Housten singing about wanting to dance with somebody again I may have a nervous breakdown!

The biggest problem with working at the packhouse was the hours - we left at 7am and got home at c.8.45pm. I chose to work 6 days a week and clocked up an impressive 67 hours per week, while Su decided 5 days was plenty and managed a rather slack 55 hours per week! And the day was so regimented - we had 2 x 15 minute breaks and 2 x 30 minute breaks, which all ended with the ringing of a loud school bell. I took my breaks outside to get some fresh air (with all the smokers!) and was always amused by Mary, a larger-than-life half-Maori half-Indian 'lady' who rejoiced at sitting on her ample behind shouting (a favourite pastime of hers) at everybody to get back to work. Obviously she's never heard of leading by example, or earning respect for that matter (clearly she's never worked for Norfolk County Council!) Another big problem was the dust and kiwi hairs floating around the place, which really affected poor Su - she managed to develop sinus problems and a chest infection, which is still keeping us both awake at night! The amazing thing is that many of the long-term employees suffer from asthma problems from years of exposure to this environment, but they still battle on! One lady in Su's shed was even allergic to kiwi hairs! Su also suffered from numerous cuts up her arms and blisters on all her fingers from labelling boxes. Oh, and did I mention that we both wore hairnets all day long? (No, I didn't take my camera!)

The saddest and most shocking thing about the work was the amount of fruit that was thrown down the 'pig shute' for feeding pigs (kind of obvious that!) or simply landfill as pigs can only eat so much. Fruit was binned for the tiniest scuff on the skin, unsightly marks, being the wrong shape and even being too large! Most of the actual fruit was perfectly ok, it just wasn't good enough for the overseas market - most of it goes to Asia, Japan is one of the largest markets I think. I was utterly shocked at what we had to throw away, especially when you think of the amount of starving people in this world, even the poor and disadvantaged or sick in this country. Multiply that by every NZ packhouse, or every fruit packhouse worldwide and imagine how much food is wasted while people are starving to death. It is unbelievable and quite shocking to be a part of this. My supervisors both had very different views on this. Jan was terribly upset by the amount of waste and rescued a lot of fruit for us to take home and also for hospices and hospitals, while Noreen was less sympathetic to the plight of the starving millions but did think that every packhouse should have a biofuel plant attached - perhaps equally valid?

As with most things, the people we met were the most memorable bit of life in the packhouse. My supervisors, Jan and Noreen, were both fabulous with a wonderful outlook on life and work, both made and sold pottery in their spare time and were extremely good at keeping our spirits up on the long evenings, and also praising us when things were going well, which certainly didn't happen in all areas of the packhouse!The rest of the graders were a mixed bunch. As there were 2 people to a table, my daily conversations ranged from: free Spanish lessons from the South Americans (of whom there were many in both sheds - I was particularly close to Elena & Jorge from Argentina and Evelyn from Chile); to a charming conversation with an Indian lady who moved here a few years ago, has an arranged marriage to a man still in India who she is desperate to set up home here in NZ with; to life on the Pacific island of Vanuatu. The packhouse has a deal to employ a large group of Islanders and I spent a fair bit of time talking with Noreen who is here until August, due to give birth in October and has left her two children aged 4 and 8 with grandparents and husband working at sea to come here and earn money. I've since learnt that she is to be deported as she wasn't supposed to be pregnant when she arrived. There were also the ladies who work here year in, year out - Connie, a visionary who knew me from another life, and Tricia who could only face one direction on the table, as that was all she'd ever done! The one thing that we both realised was how lucky we are - we can afford to breeze in, work a couple of weeks to top up our funds, and breeze (or crawl) out again. Others are here for much longer, perhaps as their English isn't good enough for many other jobs, or they know they can earn a decent amount here - in the case of the Vanuatuans enough to last them at least 6 months at home without needing to work. It was quite humbling. We travelled into work in a van provided by the company and driven by Ken, an Aucklander/Singaporean who was permanently smiling and laughing, and we kept good company with Dennis, Annika and Nicki, all from Germany who, like ourselves, were passing through for a couple of weeks.

And then we left (woo hoo!) slept, had a few (gasp) nights out which left us feeling like normal human beings again - a lovely evening with Gary & Verena who worked with Su (I got to talk football with Gary, a Spurs fan, all night, while Su & Verena talked non-football things), and a night at the Ducks Nuts with Mandy & Ralph and several bottles of wine. Now we are planning our next move, but before we leave we have made one important decision - to buy a car! We looked at the price of hiring for the next bit of our travels (Hobbiton, Waitomo to see the glowworm caves, Coromandel and Rotorua) and you could easily buy a car for that money. And our incredibly lovely parents have offered us a very generous amount towards that vehicle, so thank you, thank you, thank you - the hunt is on!

And last but by no means least we've had another stroke of luck and another very generous offer, this time from Helen & Ross who we met at Ash Ridge. Helen's father has a property in Wellington that he doesn't use during the winter months and he is quite happy for us to stay there for nothing for a couple of months, in return for some spring cleaning there and at his second property up the coast at Otaki where we can also stay! We had to think hard before accepting! So we feel extremely lucky and plan to stay in Wellington for 2 months, hopefully in a decent job so we can save a chunk of money before we head south. So thank you Helen for arranging that.

Finally, a very happy birthday to Em for 11th June - we hope you have a wonderful day and will raise a glass to you from NZ.

Right, we're off to see a man about a motor! We'll keep you posted!

Lots of love, Jo & Su, xxxxxxxx