I last left you hobbling around on my second day off after my little accident, almost able to walk again and ready to march back out on the field and de-sap some mangoes. However, things came quite differently… And since then, much has happened (since anything that happens out here in boring ol’ Katherine is something).
That same evening, while mentally and physically preparing myself for my glorious return to the field the next day, I was told I was given a new position – the next morning, I was to start working in the packing shed, along with two other German girls who had just started working for the contractor. The shed – a place I had only really seen during the induction, a place that promised shade, comfortable and more skin bearing clothing (just being allowed to wear shorts and a t-shirt was a dream come true), cold water from filtered dispensers, coffee and tea during the breaks, a refrigerator for the food, a microwave to heat it up and a whole bunch of new co-workers I had already met at the caravan park… And that’s exactly what we got. The three of us were put right to work in the morning, the two others at packing stations and I at the grading table. Now, I’ve explained in detail how the mangoes get from the tree into the bins. Here’s what happens to them next. After the picking teams drop them off in some aisle of the orchard, a tractor comes and picks them up, drives them to the shed a few at the time, where they are written down and QCd (the Quality Controler checks them and makes a statistic of how good or bad the fruit in the bin is) and wait to be tipped into the mouth of a hungry mango washing machine. After 10-15mins of being dipped, soaked, rolled around and dried they tumble onto the white rollers of the grading table, where three other ladies and I inspect every single one of them for defects and grade them according to four different classes – rejects, bulk, class 1 and premium. From there, they take a little ride on conveyor belts to different stations. Rejects land in a big bin, bulk is packed in big boxes and class 1 and premiums fall into the bins (and onto the slowly blistering and busy hands of the packers) to be packed into boxes. They are already pre-sorted according to size, which is determined by how many of them fit into a box.The fruit, now neatly and snuggly cuddling in their box, then travel onwards to be branded with a sticker and then stacked onto pallets. After some time in the cooling room, they begin their journey on a road train and end up somewhere out there. The farm exports their mangoes all over the world, from Asia to the Middle East to Europe and so forth. Just to give you an idea: One bin of mangoes contains between 480kg and 520kg of mangoes. We tip, grade and pack between 10 and 14bins an hour. And that between 9 and 12h a day. 7 days a week.
From that day on, I was no longer a picker, but a grader. Starting time in the shed has varied between 7am and 10am and the hours between 3 (for the first time today because the season is coming to an end) and 13.5 (during peak). The job itself is one of the most strenuous. Physically, the first week was a pain – literally. Standing on your feet for 12h a day, your neck always bent at a slight angle, your eyes facing downwards and all you really move are your arms and hands – by the end of the day, my heels felt as though I had stomped a mountain into the ground, my ankles were thrice their size, my calves were one big cramp (and woke me from my sleep, spastically cramping up at random moments of the night), my back felt like a wooden plank, my shoulders and neck were all knotted up and my eyes felt like a camera with broken autofocus, I’m surprised I haven’t gone cross-eyed yet. But just as the body gets used to waking up early and sleeping less, those days are long over and today the only thing that I can complain about are the millions of bug bites my ankles are riddled with… Mentally, grading is quite demanding, because there are a lot of things one has to remember when looking at a mango (or so my supervisor says), you are constantly concentrating on the fruit rolling by in front of you, constantly twisting and turning them to check for light and dark blemishes, sunburn, stem end cavities, soft noses, insect bites, bat bites, cuts, scratches, bruises, lenticels spotting, russet, pink spots, deformity and other oddities that appear now and then. Then you have to actually think about how much or little , how big or small the defect are and then decide in a split second if you throw it in the reject bin on your left, the bulk bin on your right, put it on a belt in front of you or just leave it to be packed in premium… My first few days consisted of me getting confused and my supervisor telling me again and again how I’m being too strict with the grading and how it might not be the job for me. Ugh. Mangoes seemed to be her life, her job for 7 seasons in a row and here I was, silly little backpacker, not understanding the importance of finding every single stem end cavity. To put it mildly, we didn’t really click in that first week. It took a few mess ups and my frustration building up, for us to have a little talk. Basically we argued across the table with one of the other graders being the middle man to keep the discussion to a modest level. In the end, I got my confusion and frustration off my back and she told me straight to my face what’s wrong with my grading and my “evil look” and told me that if I don’t want to be there I can go pack and if I don’t want to pack I can leave. But I decided that I’m not the type to quit that fast, or let myself be chased away from a table of mangoes. So I returned to the table the next day, started getting better and because some steam had been let out between my supervisor and me, everything became easier. Now, I already mentioned that grading is mentally strenuous because one has to concentrate on mangoes all day. This however is only true for the first few days, maybe a week. After that, when you’ve gotten to the point of watching your own hands rolling the fruit, flying over the fruit and diving upon the ones that have to be sorted out, when your movements are on auto pilot, your hand eye coordination is fit and the defective fruit basically jumps into your sight the second it hits the table, that’s when it just gets plain old boring. It becomes mindless and numbing and leaves you alone with your thoughts and fantasies… One of my first methods of making sure my brain doesn’t turn into a mango and starts rotting away is singing. Because the machine next to us is loud enough to leave a ringing in your ears after work, I can sing out loud and not even the person next to me hears my wrong lyrics and out of pitch screeching. After a few days, however, I realized that I don’t know that many songs by heart and just end up singing the same ones over and over again – Ironic by Alanis Morisette, To Be With You by Mr.Big and Heart of Gold by Neil Young are probably on the top of the “Most Sung” list. Every now and then I belt out a Beatles medley and when it starts raining that song from Fern Gully pops into my head and comes out my lips. The second method is daydreaming and picturing the days, weeks, months, years to come. Of course, the images and stories that form fantastically in that creativity-starved mind of mine are usually as far fetched as they can be, but then again, there’s no law against how many colors you can use to paint your picture.
We get two 15min breaks and half an hour lunch, just like on the field. Only here we sit on actual plastic chairs around and actual table and can warm our food (which I never do, because the line is too long and I’ve gotten used to cold pasta or rice). Conversations at the table usually circulate around work, how many bins are left, how much a certain supervisor is pissing someone off, how one would just love to be back at home and lying in bed doing nothing at the moment, further travel plans to Thailand, Bali, India are discussed, couples fight about food, size and grossness of insects and amphibians that have graced rooms, showers and toilets are shared and it is generally all quite relaxed… We’ve seen beautiful sunsets during dinner breaks, seen the trees bathed in sunlight during lunch, sat there in sweaters on gray rainy days, had storms bend the palm trees and rain drown out the noise of the machines.
Then, about two weeks into my new position, I almost got fired – twice. Since a few others and I are employed by a contractor and not the farm itself, we were getting paid a bit less and ripped off a bit more when it came to accommodation and transport to and from work. Also, we weren’t sure if we were paying taxes, getting superannuation, and we were still given our wages in cash. While all of us weren’t happy with the situation, we didn’t really do anything about it – It’s my own fault for dealing through a contractor, a German girl I started hanging out with every once in a while decided to talk to the managers of the farm. She used my handwritten pay-slip as an example and started a whole wave of stress for the farm, the contractor and us. One evening, the contractor, his breath smelling of beer from a mile away, stopped me and what started as a normal conversation, a Q&A, turned into a hissy fit. I have never been treated that way by a boss and have never heard of anyone who has. No matter how often I tried to explain that I didn’t talk to anyone at the farm, he just went on and on about (and now please excuse the language, but I’m just quoting):”Fucking backpackers. Who the fuck do you think you are?! You have no fucking right. You work for me, not the fucking farm. I’ll give you a fucking week off and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Well, fuck you too, Mr. Contractor. After I got yelled at, let the harshness of it all go in one ear and out the other and turned around and left, he continued to let off steam at the other girl. It got so intense that half the campsite was out, watching or trying to tell him to calm down and stop traumatizing the young lady… In the end, we stayed home the next day, not knowing what to make of the situation or how to deal with it. Around noon, the subcontractor, a much friendlier and caring person, came over and told me I’d go back to work the next day and that from that week on, the pay would be higher and at some point we’d actually receive real pay slips with tax and everything . I was relieved and thankful. Only to be kicked in the dirt again in the evening, when he told me that now the managers of the shed didn’t want us back. Confused, us two went to the farm on our own account the next day to find out the reason for being fired. In the end, it was because we had just taken a day off, which we had no right to do without asking the farm. Ugh. First we’re told we work for the contractor and that everything is to be planned through him, then we get fired because our contractor forces to take a day off. We explained the situation and told them we were not allowed to come to work and finally, I was allowed to go back to work, after my supervisor told them she didn’t want to train another grader and wanted me back at the table. I guess I owe her for saving my butt. Haven’t seen my boss since that night and actually hope I don’t have to till the happy day I leave this place. Not that I wouldn’t mind to get an apology for that speech which can be classified as workplace harassment, but oh well…
After that, the thought of my money flowing into the pockets of such a person in form of rent lead to the decision to move into a different room. The other girl, who had not been taken back, had organized a room for us to share, but since she left a few days later, I decided to take it anyways. 20$ less for a whole room to myself. It’s a bit further from everyone else, but what’s a few meters walk when you’ve got utter privacy.
The evenings back at the caravan park are quite nice, depending on how late we get back. I’ve gotten into the habit of preparing food for the next 2-4 days, because I don’t want to waste precious chill-time on cooking in a hot and smelly kitchen after work. The shower is still a highlight of the day, after which I walk over to the other kitchen to be a bit social and find a place and position where my new USB modem finds signal and I can go online. Feels good to be connected to the outside world again, even though the connection and speed (or lack of) of the internet does get a bit frustrating at times. Late evenings are spent watching series or movies, having a beer or two…just chilling out and talking about the day we all finally leave Katherine.
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