My 'Round the World' travels!: Slave Labour

I can landscape garden now - check out my balded tree!

Ok, so one of the main reasons to be back down in Sydney was because of the promise of a paid job, with free accommodation, being treated "Like one of the family, you can have a free car and the room in the house is yours..don't worry, no more HelpX people if we've too many, we'll just turn them away and you'll both get a good wage" (our host, talking shite post Xmas 2011). Reality check end of Jan 2012 - our host again "There are 6 HelpXers at the minute, only place for you both is the shed for the next 4 weeks, we'll pay you, but will have to take 4 hours off you each day as you're getting a bed, oh and there's no car."

Now, these people are loaded; wife is a GP and he has his own business. He's flying off to China in a few weeks - business class of course - cruises, the lot. When it comes to giving us a wage - well, it's less than the minimum wage over here in Oz. Most Aussies wouldn't get out of bed in the morning for it. In fact, working at the local KFC would probably pay us much more. Actually, maybe even cleaning the toilets with our tongues may earn more.

So what does our day consist of? Slavery and sweat, that's what! The first week was spent in the factory with the shampoo/conditioner products. Just think what a Chinese sweat shop may look like and you're pretty much there. We had 10, 000 gold and green shampoo bottles to fill. The song that was constantly ringing in my head was..'10, 000 green bottles sitting on a wall.' My job was to fill 250mls of shampoo by hand, pressing a foot pump to load the bottles and then passing them onto a small conveyor belt. Audrey had to place a lid on each bottle, tighten them and put them into a box. Talk about head melting - working like robots - I feel sorry for those Chinese people. If I ever see a green/gold shampoo bottle again, it'll be too soon. Sometimes the machine misbehaved or if I took my eye off the bottle for a split second I ended up spilling the contents everywhere. When this happened, the bottle in particular, was thrown to the nearest wall in anger, contents splattering everywhere. The wall was probably getting a good clean anyway, so there were no losers in the end.

The next few days were at the home working in the garden or a house that was to be rented out. Well, during these days we both became a landscape gardener, painter and decorator, cleaner, polyfilla person, window cleaner, spud picker, grub thrower to the chooks and cooks. First time ever using an electric saw - I had to trim back the bushes and shape them - well, they were trimmed back...balded more like with stumps growing out. It looks like autumn has arrived already after my handy work.

The end of the week saw the both of us at the factory again. This time, it was the other one, which has lots of filling machines in boxes. Heavy wooden boxes, some looking like small coffins with machines in them, filled right up to near roof level. Floor space...there was none, because of all these wooden boxes. This time, we were Bob the Builder (in a feminine way, if that is ever possible?). Hammer, chisel, screwdriver, heavy duty gloves, crowbars to the ready. Bang, bang, bang all day long, unscrewing the boxes and removing the sides, lifting heavy machinery, placing them in the correct area, filling a skip with excess wood, using a forklift truck (Auds had to use it to lift our boss up to try and unscrew a shelf at near ceiling level). Without prior training, he was lifted up alright, but there was one stage he nearly never made it down as the forklift had other ideas, jolting up and down. It was hilarious to watch.

Meanwhile, whilst we both work our asses off, our host/boss, stands and watches us, his belly getting bigger and bigger while we feed him 5 million rounds of bread and lobster paste for his lunch and make him several cups of tea. And at the end of the week it was pay-day (after asking at least 3 times for it)...yippee...well, not quite yippee, but I suppose it was better than nothing. They took the equivalent of $500 altogether off us for our accommodation (now this was a bed in a shed, not worth $5 and the food that we're eating). I have tuna and peas for lunch (costing $2 a day) and my own breakfast. Dinner is whatever leftovers from the previous night/week frozen in the freezer. Some days it's fresh though, but that's usually the weekend, when we're not there.

So yeah, I've had it with rich people - they do my head in - tight arsed bleep-bleeps (swear word being bleeped out there). Oh and the other millionaires from Queensland - they've had a complete breakdown since we left. To date there has been an attempted suicide with an overdose on tablets and wine, assault with a meat cleaver to the partner, assault of a mobile phone with a meat cleaver (which ended up in pieces), arrests, a night in the cells, an attempt to leave the country with the son, only to be stopped at immigration in the airport and now is in hiding from her partner who is mentally abusing her. And yes, being miles down the coast, we're both getting phone calls/Facebook messages asking for help from both parties. So that's another one to add to our ever growing list of jobs...trained shrinks. Whatever next. You couldn't believe this stuff, but it's actually happened - Audrey is my witness.

Two more weeks left of this slave labour and I'll just be ready to go to SE Asia. Have also booked a flight back to Peru at end of April to study Spanish and volunteer again in my favourite city of all - Cusco. Have loved Oz and especially Sydney, but there's just something about South America that's calling me back.