The Armchair Traveller
By Lynne Roberts
Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts
ISBN 978-1-927241-22-6
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Contents
Chapter 1. The Beginning
Chapter 2. Clothing
Chapter 3. Food
Chapter 4. Disasters
Chapter 5. Animals
Chapter 6. Games
Chapter 7. Cultural Differences
Chapter 8. Misunderstandings
Chapter 9. The End
Chapter 1. The Beginning
Picture a winter’s evening. The rain drums on the roof competing with the television where a rugby game is in progress.
The phone rings.
A seductive husky voice coos ‘My name is Helga from Sweden. I would like to come and stay with you.’
Another farm helper is about to come into our lives.
Friends used to ask us why we seldom travelled anywhere when our children were young. The main reasons for this were the four children themselves. Our car was a large Chrysler Valiant with bench seats front and back. This meant that one child had to sit in the front and the problem was which child to choose.
Number one son was, and is, of a mathematical turn of mind and consequently exhausting to his parent’s brains. These were already struggling to cope with such minor details as the road, the map, and whether we had remembered to bring enough food, clothing and money plus sufficient games to entertain everyone for the duration of the car trip. The last thing we needed was a front seat passenger whose idea of a good time was to add up the numbers on the number plate of each approaching car, multiply them by the nearest prime number then find the square root of the total, all without using a calculator.
We tried number one daughter in the seat between us and fared no better. First we had to compromise on having only three of her seventeen Barbie dolls with us in the front seat. Next we had her complaints to put up with. She is an avid reader and kept up a constant moan about the bends and corners in the road which disturbed her concentration. Add to that her unhappy sobs or cries of joy depending on what she was reading and she too was soon banished to the back seat.
Next came number two daughter. She sat between us, mercifully silent and still. Unfortunately she was also a very poor traveller and soon turned an interesting shade of pale green. So she was duly installed in the back seat beside an open window, much to the annoyance of her brothers and sister. From there she could control the duration of every car trip, as her ability to throw up over, at worst a sibling and at best a parent as well, meant that our car trips were of necessity very brief. It is interesting to note that said daughter now has a car of her own in which she travels the country with all the flair and panache of a rally driver and with no consideration at all for the aged parent having a coronary in the seat beside her. I look forward to the day she has children of her own and hope they will be just as good at travelling as she was!
We were then forced to try son number two in the front seat. We didn’t make this decision lightly as without his cheerful presence in the middle of the back seat nothing short of brick walls topped with armed guards could prevent the inevitable mayhem in the back as the remaining children tried to tear each other apart.
Number two son is an avid bird watcher and is keenly interested in the way the world works. (He was once keenly interested in his brother’s calculator, something for which number one son will never forgive him, even though we told him it had gone to silicon heaven.)
You would be astonished at how many questions one small boy can ask before giving his parents up in disgust as ignorant and unco-operative. In our own defence, by that time we were having the sort of conversation involving shouting at the back seat passengers and trying to prevent actual bloodshed.
Number two son decided that his fingers were machine guns and he would shoot every bird he could see with loud ‘ack ack’ noises. I had never noticed before that time how many birds could be seen in the New Zealand landscape. Nothing from sparrows to shags escaped his keen eyes until finally in exhaustion we tossed him into the back seat and it was number one son’s turn again.
After these traumatic experiences we felt that travel as such held no charms for us and instead of exploring the world we decided the world would have to come to us. To broaden our children’s understanding of the world and other cultures we joined a scheme whereby we would host young people from other countries as farm helpers and they would work on the farm for a few hours each day for us in return. This decision was also motivated by finance as kiwifruit returns were going through a low patch and mortgage rates a correspondingly high patch, so the thought of free labour was a huge incentive. Those helpers who wished to work for longer were paid at the going rates provided they had a work permit.
Shelly and Lynette, two very sweet but naïve Canadian sisters, were the first of the farm helpers we took into our family. They were in their early twenties and had completed their university degrees and decided to spend a year exploring New Zealand and Australia. This, we were to find, was a common pattern with the people who came to stay with us. This meant we were getting bright motivated people who after years of academic study liked nothing better than to do some hard physical work for a change.
We have a small self-contained cabin adjacent to the house. This sleeps two or three comfortably and our guests can choose whether to stay there or with us in the house.
Shelly and Lynette were keen to pick oranges, which was the crop in season at the time. They were also determined to return to Canada with a suntan to show off to their friends. They stripped off to bras and shorts and shivered their way through the mild winter afternoons. Shelly and Lynette were a little disappointed that there were no eligible young men around, not realising that after one look at their working attire my husband, David, had promptly sent any young men to the far side of the farm to work at physically demanding jobs such as fencing or chopping wood.
Shelly begged to learn to drive the tractor so David gave in, though not without a qualm. A brief attempt to teach Lynette to drive our old car had led to screams of fear as she bravely launched out onto the State Highway on the right hand side of the road, and his shattered nerves would not allow another attempt.
In the event Shelly proved to be reasonably competent on the tractor although we only allowed her to drive in low ratio which is appropriately marked on our Ferrari tractor as ‘turtle’.
One afternoon we left the girls to finish picking the last bin of oranges for the day. Lynette was to walk back while Shelly drove the tractor to the shed. Shelly duly arrived back at the house on foot, ran up to me and promptly burst into tears. I was a little taken aback by this but patted her back and made soothing noises until she was able to gasp out that she had ‘done something terrible.’
‘What is it?’ I asked with trepidation.
‘It’s too awful, I can’t tell you, it’s about the tractor,’ she wept.
‘Have you run over my husband?’ I asked in alarm – ‘the children, the dogs, the cats..’ To every question she moaned ‘no’ and continued to howl.
Finally when I was on the point of shaking her she admitted she had driven the tractor into a ditch and hit a shelter tree, then abandoned the tractor.
I laughed in relief and explained that I had done much
worse than that (seven young mandarin trees in one sweep with the mower) and that putting the tractor into a ditch paled by comparison.
Shelly was still inconsolable so calling to David the three of us hopped into the truck and drove around the farm to view the damage, which turned out to be very minor. As it was getting dark David decided to leave the tractor there until the morning. We drove back to the house but took a detour next door to collect our milk, which at that time we were getting direct from the neighbour’s cowshed. Inevitably this took a while as we leaned on the gate chatting to the neighbour as he finished washing down his yard. We eventually drove back to the house in complete darkness to find an hysterical Lynnette waiting for us.
Lynnette had wandered along behind Shelly and stopped to pick up some windfall apples. When she came upon the tractor she was convinced that somehow Shelly must have had an accident so she crawled through the electric fence, not a pleasant experience, and searched through the long grass for her sister’s body. Half an hour’s frantic search produced nothing so she ran back to the house only to find it deserted. By this time she had convinced herself that her sister must be seriously injured, if not dead, and that we must have taken her to the hospital. When we drove up she was on the verge of collapse herself and we ended up making soothing noises and producing cups of hot, sweet tea while the sisters wept in each other’s arms.
After a couple of days the girls were able to see the funny side of this and were ready for a new challenge. They decided they would go for a few weeks cycling holiday around the North Island. They purchased second hand bicycles and started going for a ten minute ride each afternoon after work. At this time cycle helmets were not compulsory but being a safety freak I kept nagging them to buy helmets. They compromised by choosing the two largest saucepans from the kitchen and could be seen wobbling round the yard on their bicycles complete with saucepans on heads; with the handles worn at a rakish angle.
Shelly and Lynette were not sure what sort of provisions they would need for this journey and decided to try and find another cyclist with experience to tell them.
One afternoon they arrived at the house at teatime with a good-looking young American lad in tow. They had seen him riding past our gate and had literally dragged him off his bike to bring home for dinner. He was mildly amused by this and more than happy to tell us of his cycling experiences. The girls decided he had better stay the night so they could go for a trial ride with him the next day.
They suggested he could stay in the cabin with them and the American lad agreed to this with alacrity, showing all the signs of someone who had died and gone to heaven. He was brought back to earth with a bump with the unwelcome news that he would get a mattress on the living room floor instead. However he was a good sport and without complaint he stayed the night then took the girls for a cycle ride the next day. He was rather bemused at having to wait for forty minutes while they applied their make up then seriously discussed how much deodorant to take with them.
After their ride Shelly and Lynette waved him farewell and soon after set off on their own expedition where they quickly found that a helpless look and a big smile brought any amount of truck drivers to their aid. They viewed most of the North Island from the cab of a large truck with their bicycles squeezed in the back with whatever load the truck carried.
All good things come to an end and at last it was time for the sisters to leave. After weeping their way through a box of tissues they caught the bus to Auckland airport, assuring us they would never forget us. Over the passing years we have continued to keep in touch with them in Canada and have received photos of boyfriends, weddings and ultimately babies.
Our next farm helper introduced us to another culture and showed up some of the communication problems that can arise from hosting people whose first language was not English. Three proud Sikh warriors, escaping the persecution of their homeland, arrived to stay in our cabin, and quickly managed to pick up another two friends who moved in as well. At this stage my husband, with visions of the health department descending on us with the full force of the law for housing people in overcrowded conditions, put his foot firmly down and said ‘No more.’
‘Plenty room,’ the Indians protested indignantly but we held firm.
Then followed a delightful few weeks as we tried to find some way of communicating. We never did manage to pronounce their names or were even sure which name referred to which man, as these appeared to change daily.
The Indians all said, ‘Yes Boss,’ to everything David asked or said. They said it often and very enthusiastically and it wasn’t long before we realised that that was almost the sum total of their English and that they had no idea what we were saying. Fortunately the current job was picking mandarins which was fairly self-explanatory but there were still a few hair raising moments.
Calling to someone to ‘watch out for the tractor,’ brought no response and it wasn’t until one man was unfortunate enough to get his foot run over by the bin trailer that they all learned they had to get out of the way. (His foot was undamaged, to our great relief, as it was simply pressed down into the soft mud.)
Getting the Indians to shut the gates could also be a problem, as we would call frantically, ‘Shut the gate, quickly, before the cattle get out – too late!’ This last in despair as our small herd of beasts took the opportunity to make a break for freedom onto the State Highway. There they tore down the dotted line until we could gather enough passing motorists to turn them and drive them home again.
The speed at which the Indians worked astonished us. In their culture it soon became apparent to us that they tried to involve as many people as possible in whatever work was going on. Time was obviously of no import and this was demonstrated to us one night. Three of the men by this stage had an evening job working in the kiwifruit packing shed next door and the other two were at a loose end. They asked if they could grade and pack the mandarins that they had picked that day. They said it would give them something to do while their friends were working. After agreeing on an hourly rate we settled them down with two bins of mandarins, about an hour’s work, and David whipped up a piece of wood in the workshop with two holes cut in it to show the minimum size for each grade. He explained to them that they should try a couple of fruit in the holes to get an idea of the size, then continue to pack by eye, occasionally checking back to the wooden model to check the sizing.
‘Yes Boss,’ they chorused cheerfully as we left them to it. The next morning we were accosted by two unhappy gentlemen who told us we were not paying them enough to pack the mandarins as it had taken them until two o’clock in the morning to finish.
David was amazed at this and could not believe it had taken them so long. The next night he decided to watch them as they worked before he would agree to a higher rate of pay. As he watched with mounting incredulity, one man picked up a mandarin, tried it to see which hole in the piece of wood it fitted, then had a discussion with the second man who did the same thing with the same fruit. Having come to an agreement they then carefully laid the mandarin in a box and selected another one to repeat the whole slow process. With an impolite exclamation my husband showed them how to do it, filling a box in about four minutes. They watched him respectfully and said ‘Yes Boss,’ when asked if they understood. They copied his speed and movements and David left them to it, confident they would be finished within the hour. Wrong! They went back to the discussion and the piece of wood as soon as he was out of sight and again worked until two in the morning.
David refused to pay them for more than the hour’s work it should have taken them and they agreed eventually, saying they liked the work as it gave them something to do at night.
The Indians, naturally enough, felt the cold very badly as they were used to a hot climate and even our subtropical winters were too cold for them. We put a heater in the cabin for them and they would sit around it whenever they weren’t working. I told them not to put anything on top of the heater but to no avail.
We drove into the yard one afternoon to find that the heater had set fire to their underwear which they had laid on top of the bars to dry. By the time we arrived they were standing in a circle watching the heater as the flames licked the walls and scorched and melted the fridge. Muttering under his breath about the Indians, who were probably feeling warm for the first time in weeks, David grabbed the heater and threw it out into the yard, the adrenaline rush overriding the pain as the hot metal seared his hands. I emptied the fire extinguisher on the heater and what remained of the fridge while the Indians stood in a row and watched us with interest. We then very unreasonably gave them extra blankets instead of a new heater and replaced the fridge with an old one, which was much smaller and didn’t hold as much.
When all the mandarins had been picked it was time for the Indians to move on. They were very reluctant to go and begged to stay. One man in particular wanted to send for his wife and many children and proposed that they could all move into the cabin permanently. We turned him down as our work tends to be seasonal and we didn’t want to tie ourselves down to one permanent worker. The poor man then threw himself to the ground and clutched David’s knees, weeping and begging to stay. This was acutely embarrassing for a Kiwi bloke, particularly when he couldn’t move away but was pinned to the ground by a lamenting Indian.
However I am happy to say that twelve months later this same gentleman drove in to visit us and thanked us in near perfect English for having had him to stay. He had been given refugee status and was in the process of bringing his large family over to the ‘Promised Land’. He was as effusive with his thanks, as he was when he was asking to stay, so now if he calls in David stays firmly seated on the tractor to avoid emotional displays.
The next two visitors were Alexandra and Maria, two young girls from Argentina. Their families had reluctantly given them permission to travel the world for a short time provided they phoned home every second day. The girls spoke Spanish and a very little English and had been schooled in a convent, very protected and constrained. The freedom in New Zealand very quickly went to their heads. They learnt their first words of English, one of these being ‘sexy’, and proceeded to pout and sulk when I would not allow them to drive off with complete strangers to parties every night. I was horrified at what they might get up to, as they seemed to have no interest in anything other than young men, and as they were both only eighteen I felt a certain parental responsibility towards them. Preventing them from getting large black tattoos on their arms and legs was obviously the last straw for them as they decided to leave soon after that. I only hope they managed to survive the rest of their holiday without too many problems but we never heard from them again.
Important Phrases for Foreigners to Learn
Please pass the muffins
Why has the hot water run out? I have only been in the shower for forty minutes.
These boots are not fashionable
May I use your phone to call – Denmark, Hong Kong etc? I will pay for the call
I cannot afford to pay for the phone calls I have made.
Why do you have so few Television channels?
I am not tired.
Do all New Zealanders go to bed so early?
Please wake me up in the morning
Please do not wake me up in the morning
Where is the nearest Macdonald’s?
In my country only madmen/peasants/women would do this
Please pass me some more muffins
My bed is too hard/soft/cold/hot/lonely
I can’t possibly do that – I might chip a nail
My hairdryer has blown the fuses but my hair is still wet
Why do these sandflies bite me?
Where is the nearest bungy jump?
This is an emergency – I have run out of shampoo
I am not ready for work, as I have not yet waxed my legs
I have just broken the scissors/loppers/chainsaw/tractor
I have never seen such large kiwifruit before
Can I have your recipe for making muffins?
I will be back to stay with you again