We follow the cry of the Kiwis and our way leads us totally unexpected from Waihi, the gold mining town, back to the east coast town: Opotiki. Our new friends from France Mimi & Gaël arranged a job for us. Even if there are only two weeks left before Bianca’s parents come to New Zealand we accept that kind offer. We spend much time with our friends, survive chilly nights, do a very important job and dive deeper into New Zealands Maori culture.

We experience New Zealand friendliness and hospitality as we arrived at Collin’s house. He is our new employer and immediately asks us to come in for coffee and biscuits. The paper documentation will be done meanwhile. We find out that his wife is from Lübeck and is remarkably happy to speak her mother tongue with us again. Her son Finn seems to be happy about the visitors too and uses Thomas as his new climbing tree. CamperMate (the one and only app for all needs of a camper in New Zealand) promises us a hot shower at the i-Site. Now that we are freshly washed, we make our way to the Sparkbox. Surprisingly we meet our friends there. It is impressive how all backpackers seem to be attracted by the running Wi-Fi like moths search the light. We have a quick talk and our reunion is cheerful and hearty. We meet them again the same evening in their temporary home at Bobby’s house. She is a warm-hearted Maori lady and our French friends have met her during a trip in South America. The warm welcome and the hospitality of these Kiwis is simply stunning. Mimi and Gaël stay with her and enjoy having a warm house and a hot shower during these cold nights. We cook together in the evening and exchange our experiences from the last weeks while Bobby stays with her family.

The early bird makes the pull

On our first day at work we meet at 07:30 at our employerÂ’s house. We all drive together in one van to Te Kaha, the kiwi plantation where we should work today. The drive lasts about one hour and we are all still a bit tired and quiet. To be honest we are a bit quiet because the streets are slippery from the rain and Collin still races along the narrow streets on the coastal route. Only when his daughter tells him to drive properly, he changes his style of driving. At 08:30 we arrive at the orchard and Collin hands us each a scissor and a bag for the strings to be put in. The boss explains that the kiwi canes have to be freed.

To truly understand what this means one has to know that the kiwi trees are cut into roof-like shapes at a height of about 1,80m. You can pick the ripe fruit more easily this way. Each row is held by large poles (4-5m high) with wire attached to them. Attached to the wire are strings in 45° angle. These strings are the basis for the newly grown kiwi canes, which grow very very long. Just perfect to carry a lot of kiwi fruit in the next season.

Our task is basically to get the newly grown canes from their 45°strings back down. Therefore you have to entangle as much string as possible from the cane and then give it a strong pull down. The goal is to get as much as possible down, whereas the best case would be the whole cane. The breakage should be limited to an absolute minimum. The part about the “pull” is mainly a task for the boys. Whereas the girls should cut the black strings as high as possible and put the rubbish strings into the bags.

Our first break is at 11am. All the workers gather together at a veranda next to a house in the orchard where they provide hot water for coffee and tea and a microwave. Our group of workers consists of us four travellers and local Maori workers. We eat our sandwiches and listen fascinated to what the other workers are talking about. The owner of the house (we fondly call him “the mustache guy”) is obviously highly interested in Germany. Every single break he asks us exactly one question about the people and the country in general. For him France seem to be only interesting in case of a new terror attack. Our half hour break always finishes too quickly and before you know it we are back at work. There is another break at 2pm and we finally finish at 4:30pm. As a grand finale to our working day we get a sudden heavy rainfall. Everyone is especially happy to be in the car on our way back home.

This exhausting work and the constant looking upwards respectively working with your hands above the head show some bad effects: Bianca has a hell of a headache and lays down whilst Thomas has to organise dinner and everything by himself

He cooks a beautiful meal and even prepares the sandwiches for the next day. What a sweetheart! The next working day only alternate from the other because a new colleague “T” is joining our group instead of Collin. He is also the new driver. Besides this everything goes according to plan and we are hard-working employees. The boys try to get as many canes back down as possible. Thomas is always a bit too strong for the job and some of the brittle wooden poles come crashing down. Oops – sh*t happens. In the meantime we talk with our friends about everything which makes the whole day go relatively quick. All the other colleagues are mostly relaxed. As soon as it starts to rain they find shelter and wait for the rain to stop. We just follow their example and stay with them. Generally everyone is in a good mood and we have some funny conversations.

Wintery temperatures in Opotiki

On Tuesday 19.07. - this date needs to be written down - we indeed had ice on our windscreen. It wasn’t easy to get it off at all without a real scraper. That’s how cold it is here in Bay of Plenty. Unfortunately Mimi & Gaël experience the same and their van battery is too low on this morning. That’s why Marty gibt StarthilfeMarty needs to help his brother with a jumpstart in the afternoon.

In general we are really lucky concerning the weather. During the days we mostly enjoy the warming sun. We use the beautiful scenery for a photo-shooting with our friends. It is hilarious and we laugh out loud. The work is done easy while you have great people around you. They are really relaxed days in the autumn kiwi orchard.

However our mood changes immediately when our colleagues tell us, that we are not doing the job right and on top of that we are too slow for them. We are quite irritated about this, as we do exactly what our boss told us to do. It reveals that we are actually not supposed to cut the black strings, but knot them back on.

To put them back on, we need to learn the special kiwi-knot first

Thomas, as the speaker of our group is introduced in how to make the knot and should teach the rest of us later on. It takes a while for us to get it, but then we are all perfect knot-maker. From now on its us girls doing the kiwi-knots and the boys have to do their pull action to get the canes down.

La vie en francais & the magical cat Te Kuru

This evening we are invited to spend the night at Bobbys house, as she stays with her sisters. They are all very close and see each other daily. We are even more delighted to experience the Maori hospitality once more. We are especially happy about the hot shower. Gaël starts the fire in the fireplace and we all sit together comfortably. It is so funny and we keep on laughing the whole evening through. We have cheese, wine and cracker as an aperitif. Generally we enjoy to be part of the French lifestyle of our friends. It is interesting to see that French and German people have more in common then we usually tend to think we do. Arch enemies?! No way!

There is another roommate in Bobby’s house: Te Kuru. He is actually the neighbour’s cat but anyway he walks in and out of Bobby’s house like he pleases. You only need one look into his eyes to know that this cat is definitely magical or at least he looks more like Baba Yagas best friend. However Te Kuru knows exactly how is the boss in this house. If he is finished with getting cuddled, he simply bites into the hand that is annoying him all of a sudden. Problem solved, Te Kuru likes order in “his” house.

Marty the hothead needs a little cool-down

There is always something. Marty worries us and he might need some attention. Even though it is winterly cold outside, the engine seems to be overheating really quickly. The path up to CollinÂ’s house is comparably steep and Marty temperature indicator rises with every metre we climb up that hill. At some point we even notice a strange sizzling sound coming out of the engine.

Thomas, our mechanic detects the problem after a short analysis. The hose with the coolant leaks.

At least he thinks this is the true story behind this whole mess. On one day we are surprisingly working in another orchard because the forecast says rain for Te Kaha. It is only us four backpackers there alone, so we ask ourselves whether this is a good sign or some kind of punishment. Luckily for us, Collin has a spare clamp in the shed there. Thomas uses the lunch break to install the clamp and shut the leakage. We refill the coolant fluid and voilà Marty is running smoothly again. You need to know how to help yourselves. That’s what our parents told us. Seems to be true indeed.

A feathery friend

Even though we are staying with our friends in BobbyÂ’s house, we still have to maintain Marty and follow our camper habbits. We have to find a dumpstation to get rid of the grey water. Therefore we need to drive through the darkness to get there. At a country road underneath a lamppost we find what we were looking for. Even more than that. While we rinse our grey water into the dumpstation, we notice a feathery spectator watching us from the lamppost. It really is a morepork. It is a small endemic type of owl. He watches us and it pure luck that we can see him that clear, just because he is sitting underneath the bright light. Otherwise these nocturnal birds are really hard to spot, let alone take a picture of them. The efforts to go there paid of even twice as much.

T tells us a little anecdote:
He explains on our way to work that the cry of the morepork meant evil or misfortune. Back in those days when the Maori tribes fought against each other, the Maori warriors used the imitation of that cry to communicate whilst spying on a hostile village. They were able to coordinate their attack through the cry. Therefore Maoris are getting suspicious if they hear unusually many morepork crys during the night. Our feathery friend didnÂ’t cry or make any sound at all. So we are lucky once more.

In general we learn a lot about the Maori culture, their lifestyle and the area from our colleagues. Maoris seem to be truly close to nature. They respect life and the spiritual power of creatures. It seems said that we Christians have lost it. But we are also talking about the normal daily stuff: Pokemon-App (we hadnÂ’t heard about it until they told us during lunchbreak), what alcoholic drinks are best, how much grass costs in Germany (these guys smoke pot to make Bob Marley look modest in comparison to them) and so on...

We have our last working day on Friday in Te Kaha. We are really happy because we had 8 days of work in a row. According to the forecasts we would have been lucky with 3 or 4 days. It was good to fill up the traveller’s wallet. WE spend the weekend with Mimi and Gaël in Bobby’s house. And we really make it comfy. We have self-made pizza for dinner, wine and sweets. On Saturday we have a little shocking moment when Thomas’ laptop refuses to work anymore. The battery was already a bit sluggish lately, but now it seems to be finally over.

ThatÂ’s an end to working on the laptop for now. Rubbish.

We enjoy our last hours with Mimi and Gaël. Eventually saying goodbye was really hard and a few tears came down. It’s never getting any easier to say goodbye. Even though we have gained a bit of practice in the meantime. But we will see each other again very soon and we have new adventures waiting for us anyway.

 

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