-Chapter 44- Police operation in Ashburton & harvesting potatoes

We were glad to be able to check into Ashburton Holiday Park again on March 2nd. The owners were super nice, there was plenty of space and several washrooms. Plus, this place was really cheap and friendly residents of the campsite would chat with us all the time.

Attention, now comes a slapstick action: On our day off, Celina and I needed a jumpstart again. Fortunately, we always have the hearse for that now, and the problem was quickly solved. So the three of us inevitably took a trip in our car to the beach to recharge the battery. Then we drove into town to run some errands. Celina was lying in the back bed to give directions, I was the driver, and we had picked up Flori from the bank. After a few meters, we stopped as the first car at an intersection... where we were actually facing a police car. Flori and I saw it at the same time, and unfortunately, we didn't imagine that she was staring at us in our car. "Head down!" we yelled, because Celina's head had to be visible between the seats for sure. Flori of course noticed at that moment that he hadn't fastened his seatbelt, I had turned completely red and tried to avoid the gaze of the policewoman who was staring at me the whole time across the intersection. To make matters worse, Flori then turned to Celina to push her head down. When the police car turned green, it drove across the intersection and stopped right next to my window, where she motioned for us to roll down the window, Celina held her breath. She yelled something at us that I didn't understand in my panic, but Flori reacted luckily and took our jackets off the dashboard, which apparently obstructed the view. The policewoman was satisfied and drove on.

Harvesting Potatoes

On Monday, we spent an hour and a half at the job agency, which turned out to be a temp agency. We had to fill out a lot of paperwork and then sign an employment contract. After that, we received an introduction to potato harvesting. Unusually, we didn't have anything to do for the next two and a half days. Even Flori had enough of doing nothing on Thursday morning. At noon, I got a call from the recruiter named Ashley and woke up Flori, who had to get ready within 20 minutes and drive to work.

His first work partner was a woman named Babara, who picked him up in the office with the words "That is Florian??" slapped his hand once, and clicked her tongue when she found out he was from Germany. Overall, the work was okay and went by pretty quickly, he said. When Celina and I were sitting in the TV room in the evening and heard the hearse turn the corner, we felt like two children greeting their father after work.

The next day, Celina and I finally got to work.

Our driver was an older, small but tough woman named Tania, who explained everything to us in a friendly manner, even though the work was really not complicated. In addition, a really nice woman in her mid-forties started working with us at the same time. When we worked with her again the next day, she praised our work to the boss of the following day when she skeptically asked how often we had already worked. There were also two French people and a Chinese woman with us in the car. Celina and I also found the work to be totally fine. But compared to the kiwi farm, the working conditions are much worse: There are obviously no toilets in the fields, and we were standing all day in the back of the trailer of the tractor. For two days, this trailer was open, so we were standing in a constant cloud of dust. We felt like miners. At the end of the day, it always felt like I had a kilo of dust in my lungs and my eyes were burning despite wearing sunglasses. The first action when we arrived was to sprint to the shower to scrub off our normal skin color. Particularly nice: After the 11-hour day without a tarp, my eyes were so red from the dust that I could have easily played a role in a horror movie.

With the potato harvest, we had different working hours every day and never knew if, how long, and when we had to work the next day. That was a bit annoying, but it wasn't a big deal for us because we were flexible anyway and only wanted to do it for a few weeks. But we find it crazy that there are some New Zealand employees who have to do this their whole lives.

Our super task, by the way, was to remove stones, straw, and rotten potatoes from the conveyor belt so that only the good potatoes could go into the containers. But I couldn't really get along with the rotten potatoes. Every time I had to touch one, my hand sunk into it and once I accidentally hit my work partner on the arm when I wanted to throw it disgustingly into the trash. One Sunday all three of us worked, but in different trucks. (Flori worked with Barbara again). It's surprisingly fun to watch your friends drive by on an old tractor and throw dirt over their shoulders really fast.

The definitely nicest moment was when two hedgehogs rolled over the conveyor belt, and all four of us failed in the attempt to remove them from there. What happens now to the poor hedgehogs if they end up in the potato containers?

Once, Celina and I were on call and in the morning received instructions to fill in at a location 30 kilometers away. Celina had just woken up from a deep sleep and was talking to the employee (named Gaye!!) completely confused. Within half an hour, we got ready and took off. An hour later, we arrived in the parking lot of the small factory. We explained our situation to an employee sitting outside, and he kindly sent us inside, where around 30 employees were on break. When we opened the door, we felt like we were on a stage. When we said "morning," 30 people said it back, and in the back corner, a Maori named Moea offered us a seat next to him. We were offered coffee three times, and the employees, who were almost exclusively Maori, talked to us kindly. After the break, Moea took us into the factory, gave us a vest, gloves, and unfortunately a hairnet. Celina was led by him to a corner of the factory where she had to unfold and stack boxes. I was stationed first, an older, slightly quirky-looking woman jokingly called to me, "Welcome to the crazy house." I wondered how I could be lying in bed one moment and then, an hour later, standing in the middle of a factory halfway to Christchurch wearing a hairnet! Moea took me to a conveyor belt where a woman named Destiny greeted me. (When she later asked where I was from, it turned out that she either didn't understand me correctly or had never heard of Germany before). I had to do the same thing as on the trailer, but now the potatoes were washed. After 1.5 hours, another Maori took over for me, and I was sent to pack boxes. We did that for another 3.5 hours, and during lunch break, 5 people offered us coffee again. When we finished, the Maoris thanked us several times and we were allowed to leave. The employees there were just really warm-hearted. All in all, a pretty nice experience.

Although at this point we couldn't have guessed it in the slightest, that was our last day of work. We didn't hear anything from the employment agency for a whole week, except for two strange messages that were supposed to keep us waiting. Flori and Celina asked about work, and Flori even called, but we still weren't assigned any shifts. Flori was able to work one more day as a substitute, but other than that, that was it. We really wanted to work desperately and finally found a job after a long search. Honestly, what else could we have done? We stayed at the campsite, hoping for work and trying to spend as little as possible.

And then came Corona.