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New Zealand, September 2007
I know that I'm going to hear from Ann, my ex-wife, when she reads this. For years while we were married, she bugged me to help her with the gardening. I would help, but only begrudgingly and doing as little as I could get away with. The reason she is going to give me grief is that I just voluntarily spent the last month doing some serious, industrial scale gardening.
The Projects
Following a theme of trying out various service projects in my travels, I worked with Conservation Volunteers of New Zealand for a month. In my 4 weeks with them, I mulched tree saplings; pulled, axed, and mutilated non-native weeds (gorse, tabacco weed, and the incredibly evil moth vine), some that were as tall as small trees, often on extremely steep slopes; planted native treees (in one day, 9 of us planted 468 trees); dug up and transplanted native trees, moving them out of harms way of loggers; cut 3 meter tall hedges (hadn't been trimmed in 8 years) down to one meter; hauled gravel in motorized wheelbarrows; picked up and cut up downed trees. With all the climbing up and down steep hills, swinging a mattock, sawing and hauling wood, hammering, getting stabbed with thorns, wallowing in mud on slippery slopes while wrestling with weeds, this was the hardest physical work that I have done in the last 20 years.
While I am still likely to grumble if I ever have to mow another lawn, the work was fun. Bucking the normal weather pattern, the weather was glorious. It rained only two days while we were in the bush, with temperatures in the 50s to 70s F. The scenery was always pleasant and often spectacular. There are few insect pests (New Zealand houses don't have screen windows, which are open most of the year). The people I worked with were fun and energetic. I got to play with manly tools. The CVNZ team leaders were knowledgeable and pleasant. The clients, including park rangers and land owners were always appreciative. And amazingly, I was developing a sense of nurturing towards plants.
Hauling gravel up hiking trails was particularly manly and fun. The wheelbarrows were motorized and rode on rubberized tank treads. One of the Japanese guys turned one over trying to let me pass in the other direction. Which reminds me how incredibly unlikely this activity would have been in the US. No one in our litigious culture would let any volunteer operate heavy machinery, no matter how many waivers were signed (we didn't sign any).
Another activity was building traps to catch non-native critters like weasels, stoats, rats, and possums. New Zealand has only one native species of mammal, a fruit bat. When the English arrived in the early 1800s, they felt like something was missing, so they began introducing plants and animals to New Zealand. Someone introduced rabbits and Australian possums for their fur. Unfortunately, no one wants fur anymore, even if from pest animals. Meanwhile, the possums eat all the foliage from trees, leaving them dead. And, the rabbits breed like, well, rabbits. Someone then decided to bring in natural predators of rabbits: weasels and stoats (even bigger weasels). Unfortunately, weasels and stoats are naturally lazy and found the slow, dumb, native ground dwelling birds and their eggs much easier to catch. Many of these birds had no natural predators and the only self-defense technique they had mastered was the "freeze and pretend you are invisible" technique. Sadly, the weasels were not fooled at all.
The Volunteers
Each week was spent with a different group of volunteers as some left, others arrived, and the remaining ones were shuffled between teams. For the first two weeks, I was the only non-Asian (with two Koreans, two Chinese, and seven Japanese), For that matter, I was also the only person over the age of 25. The second two weeks were a complete shift, with people mostly being from the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany, with only one token Asian each week. During the third week, one of the volunteers was a 40 year old postal worker from the UK.
I was greatly impressed by these young people. They were always polite and considerate. During the first two weeks, everyone spoke English, resorting to Japanese only when they were working on a translation or searching for an English word. They teased and joked around, but never maliciously. I never saw anyone become angry or frustrated or even irritable. We had long philosophical conversations about such things as why Samurai in Japanese movies always sound like they are trying to cough up loogies, why anime characters scream so much, and whether or not Japanese people really act that way. The consensus opinion was that old Japanese movie actors were guilty of severe overacting. I also had the opportunity to teach my Japanese teammates useful things from American culture. I am most proud of teaching them the concept of whining, much to the annoyance of the CVA team leader. One apt student quickly caught on and we did whining Samuari imitations for several days.
Incidentally, I had always assumed that as I got older, my vocabulary and sophistication with English grammar would only improve. However, I find that with travel, my English reduce to vocabulary of 200 words. Short phrases. Present tense only. No adverbs. Then I talk easy with people no speak English well. Because I now have skill with small number words, short sentences, bad grammar, I translator between New Zealand team leader and Japanese students.
The Europeans were no slouches either. Four young 18 year old Brits were just starting a 20 week stay working with CVNZ. One of them was planning to begin university next year as a political science major and he knew almost as much about American government and American history as I did. A young woman from Ireland had a degree in community development and had worked with disadvantaged peoples in Ireland. There was a German student from Hamburg who studied dairy technology; an impressive specimen, he was nearly seven feet tall, strong as an ox, and capable of eating what three normal people could at a meal.
Both Asians and Europeans were adventuresome. Well, they came to the right place, for NZ is the country for extreme sports (I saw a sign here saying "gravity is a toy"). Almost every town in NZ has bungy jumping, or sky diving, or parasailing, or roping down tall buildings, or racing down rivers in jet boats. Many of my teammates did one or more of these activities. When there were no commercial extreme sports available, they made up some of their own. Instigated by one of the Japanese students, four people formed a human chain holding hands while the Japanese student grabbed an electric fence. One of the other team members got the incident on video. Someday, I'll try to figure out how to imbed a video on a web page, but in the meantime, when any of you see me again, remind me to show the movie of dancing, screaming volunteers.
After my last day with CVNZ, eleven of us, including Japanese, Brits, and one retired American went out on the town for a pub crawl. We had an excellent time, despite the fact that not much alcohol was consumed. I didn't have any and the most anyone else had was 3-4 mixed drinks. There was much time spent taking pictures of ourselves acting foolish, playing air drums and air guitars along with the music, trying to make sense out of a televised game of Australian rules football, many hugs, many jests, and a general expression of gushy happiness.
If you ever watch a group of Japanese or Korean tourists taking photos of each other, they almost always pose with one or both hands presenting a peace sign (aka V for victory). I asked the Japanese students why they did it, and most didn't know. One eventually remembered that in the winter olympics held in Sapporo, Japan during the 1960s, an American figure skater took a fall, sat smiling with poise and dignity, got up and finished her performance unrattled. This American resonated with something in the Japanese psyche and she became an instant celebrity. She was also a peace activist and flashed a peace sign during an interview. The peace sign became part of Japanese culture overnight.
What was most impressive that night was how these young people reacted to someone who was out-of-control. Someone living in New Zealand, a friend of a friend of one of my teammates, had joined us. He had already been drinking, drove into town staggering drunk to meet up with us, and proceeded to drink even more. Several of our party, especially the Japanese girls, felt uncomfortable and went back to their lodgings. Those of us that remained tried to reason with the fellow to quit the night and get a taxi home. When this failed, the students mugged him and took his keys. The out-of-control fellow had no other recourse than to abandon his car and take a taxi home.
Tram restoration project, Oratia, New Zealand
My favorite CVNZ project I've saved for last. Over the month I worked three days for a remarkable gentleman, Dave Harre, and his family. The project was the restoration of a 1924 vintage tram car. The car, the third of a series of four, had been built in Portugal and saw a couple of decades of service in Lisbon. Somehow, these trams found their way to a barn in Aspen, Colorado where Dave found them. After a couple years of patient negotiations, he managed to buy the four cars, then fought US export and NZ import regulations for another year. As each car is finished, it goes to some NZ town to return to active service.
The renovation of this third car had started a year ago and was almost completely stripped down. The first day I spent sanding and varnishing pieces from the roof of the driver's vestibule, then fighting to remove woodscrews with painted over slots and rusted threads. The second day I was given a grinder to smooth out the cast iron bumpers, followed by puttying in dents and sanding. Two weeks later, I returned to disassemble, sand, and varnish eight armrests.
At the end of the last workday, Dave had invited each team member to come back and work some more on the tram if they wished. Between finishing up with CVNZ and picking up a campervan to explore the rest of New Zealand, I had an empty weekend, so I called Dave and volunteered to work another day. The weekend was not what I expected. When I arrived on Saturday afternoon, I found myself crashing someone's birthday party. Dave had given his house over to a friend, neighbor, and relative through marriage for her 50th birthday. He had fired up his antique, 1880s vintage steam tractor and used it to steam mussels, veggies, and a pudding. Some of the people there were antique car enthusiasts, especially of 1960's muscle cars, and someone had brought a barbeque built into the trunk of the rear half of a 1950's chevy, which served up steaks and chicken. The night was full of rock-and-roll, along with discussions of politics, family histories, and travel.
The next morning was Sunday and Dave said that he didn't feel like working on the tram, so I spent a pleasant morning and lunch with his family, including visits from other family members and friends. Meanwhile, other friends were cleaning up from the previous night's festivities.
This is his retirement after a remarkable life. Dave has advanced degrees in psychology and history and taught at the university level. He also filmed documentaries. Near the end of the Cultural Revolution, he went to China to film the story of a New Zealander that lived in China from 1927 through the end of WWII. (The subject of this film had organized the theft of Japanese machinery and put it to use manufacturing weapons for the Chinese Army). In the 1980s, Dave turned to restoring an historical house using at risk kids from bad neighborhoods for labor. He said that keeping up with the kids was one of the hardest jobs he ever undertook, but he also said that all have turned out well and several of them have grown up to take in or mentor other at risk kids.
The house Dave lives in was built in the middle of the 1800s and has been in his family since 1914. Some of the rooms still retain wallpaper and decorations from 100 years ago. The decor of the house if sufficiently authentic that it has been the set of several movies. The garden is filled with plants that have been in the family for decades. They have a winery with about 300 vines, an extensive organic garden, and chickens (and they live only 12 miles from the biggest city in NZ, Auckland). They have a library with hundreds of books and I didn't see a television anywhere. They have a two story turret rising up from the middle of a swamp. They grow much of their own food, create their own entertainment, and share with family and neighbors (most of whom are also family). Imagine growing up in an old home, full of antiques, tools, crafts, spare parts, gardens, projects; a home without television and unstructured play. Not surprisingly, his children grew up creative. One of Dave's sons is the owner and chef of a pair of successful Paris restaurants. One daughter is an artist. The other daughter is in the film industry, having worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She was in charge of costume consistency, making sure that if a sleeve was rolled up, a medallion was worn on the right shoulder, or the boots were dirty in one scene, then they would look the same in scenes immediately prior and after.
Incidentally, Peter Jackson, the producer and director of the Lord of the Rings, also has a passion for old things. For one thing Peter Jackson is a major sponsor of the tram restoration project. For another, Jackson owns a WWII vintage C-47 (the military version of a DC-3, the first commercially successful passenger airliner). During the filming of the Lord of the Rings, Jackson used his C-47 to shuttle personnel around. The plane has authentic instruments, which means it has no modern navigation. The pilot got lost over the ocean, finally found the airport, made a straight in approach (no messing around with normal pattern), and ran out of gas on the taxiway. Had the pilot found land a few minutes later, the Lord of the Rings might not have been completed.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Dick Delanoy
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