I was looking forward to finding out about the garlic cleaning job, especially since I got moved from zukinis to an apparently better job. We got dropped off around 6.45 which was a bit later than most jobs, we met the farmer named rod who seemed nice enough but we got told beforehand he can be a bit of a slave driver. He showed us to the area we were working which was in an open ended shed which meant shelter from the sun all day so that was a relief. There was 8 of us in total, me and five cockneys who were self confessed geezers, a French guy who didn't talk much and the dense kiwi guy Simon. We were all sat in a line on a bunch of crates and we each had a bin for the rotten or small garlic, with a crate at the other side to put the good garlic in, and in front of our feet was a large metal cage full of garlic.

We were told the way to do our job was to pick out all the garlic, any small shaped ones, the definition of size was a constant puzzle when he came around picking garlic out our crates, all rotten garlic were to be put in a bucket and when it's full put it in a large wooden bin, the good garlic was to be cut down at the roots and then the stalk cut off to a decent size and take off the outer layers of the shell then put in the crate. It seemed easy enough the instructions then being told that you make 16 dollars a crate and also in the shade sounded like a good enough deal.

We all started off happy enough, some getting on quicker than others, there were a what seemed to be family of Fijians working across from us doing the same work, and when rod came in to have a crack on we discovered he was a little bit racist, not saying the n word but making a play on their skin. Some of the guys thought that if you can work at a good rate then the pay would be great and if we were guaranteed the work for 3 months so we asked rod if he can sign us off for the visa and he said no.

Apparently he got caught having illegal workers once and so all the work he has on offer is just cash in hand so he can't be caught employing illegal workers. So the Fiji people in the shed were probably working there on the sly.

As you can imagine a lot of us were annoyed, some of the cockneys said this was their third try of a job and none of them would sign them off the days counting towards their visa and they felt that there was not much point in working the rest of the day and this is when rod starting turning into a bit of a p**** He basically said go home if you want and if we kept putting too many small garlic in our crate he would ring up the hostel to tell them to take us away, but the problem is he kept changing how big the right size was and ended up pissing everyone else off. And the problem was these cages of garlic were rubbish, some cages were full of small or rotten ones and it would take ages to fill a crate, some got lucky, i dont feel i did, i could only manage 3 crates while most got 4. Then he had a go at how long we were working, thought 7 hours wasn't enough he wanted us to work 10, without us having a clue then even if we were just keen to have a bit of money for cash he said he only wanted half the amount of us the next day

We finished at 2.30 and when mark showed up to take us back we all basically had a go at him asking why are you signing us up to different jobs when we can't get signed off, his only reply was that its money at the end of the day. But even the likes of onion picking where the average daily income is 40 dollars and oranges is worse at 28 dollars a day he said its slave labour but you have to put up with it.

After this day I decided to get the hell out of there, if I stayed on the zukini farm I could have probably stuck it out but it's basically slave labour and exploitation out here. The work is rubbish pay and the farmers are bent and can't sign you off on the visa, the hostel staff just want commission off you going to these jobs and the hostel is disgusting.

The only positive from this experience is the people I met, because we're all in the same boat you pull together and make the most of it when your hanging out together and have a laugh.

But when a guy slashes his heel open on broken glass in the grass, French people coming into the hostel after being kicked out and trying to steal people's belongings because there is no security, people doing drugs and watching porn on the tv it's quite a surreal place to be . The day before I left somebody made a complaint to the public tourist information and the same day the health and safety inspectors from the council came. A meeting was held at the hostel later in the day from the staff and they said they passed but they would return in a few days to inspect again so they wanted people to volunteer to clean for a little bit of their rent. A lot of people just shouted saying it would take hours and hours if not days to clean the place, and they probably didn't pass the test they got told to clean up otherwise its getting closed down. But the only reply we got was, yeah it's slave labour but that's what you got to do.

No mate, I'm off.