We’re Not Just Wild, We’re Trained, Domesticated

By the beginning of October, we had arrived in Thames, gateway to the Coromandel Peninsula, population 7,000: our home for the majority of October. We had arranged a “Wwoof” job with Jennifer Neal, a business-savvy local. We’d work 27 hours a week for her in exchange for bed, more-than-six-minute hot showers, hot water bottles, and foods that were best described as “yum.” We got weekends off, and work was helping Jennifer with her catering business, as well as running her “dairy” (here, that’s a general store.)


The shop – the Kauaeranga Store (“Cow-Ruhnga”) - vends tobacco, “lollies” (in New Zealand, that’s candy) bread, milk, ice creams, and more. Weeks of no work in Auckland meant shop keeping was not only economical for our budgets, but also entertaining. Thames’ residents made work lively; oftentimes the average Kauaraeanga Store patron was a small child eating her weight in sweets.

On October 5th, we found ourselves working 12 to 7 p.m. Through some ironic twist of fate, we had turned into Martha Stewart doppelgangers charged with turning the shop’s porch into a visual masterpiece. Brushes in hand and buckets of fresh paint at our sides, we turned plastic tables purple. Around 3 o’clock, fifteen minutes of sunshine ended when a cloud passed over the sun, and it started to rain. Funky weather is typical of New Zealand, which is sometimes called the place of “all seasons in one day.” As gallons of water tumbled from the sky, we heard kids’ shouts growing steadily louder. Next thing we knew, we were in round-faced company.
Soon enough, ladies of the world and youths were fast friends (this happened perhaps faster than usual because we were accompanied by Genoveva, Jennifer’s eight-year-old daughter, and she’s spunky.) Movies, music, Halloween costumes – if it was fun to talk about, the kids covered it.

“Do you know who Akon is?” shot one.
“What about Beyonce?”
“How about Spiderman?”

Drifting off in pairs, they left, but the afternoon didn’t end without some ukulele sing-alongs, Harry Potter read-alouds, mini-fortress construction, and further cultural sharing.

Outside of work, we spent time getting to know Jennifer, Genoveva, and the other “wwoofers” Jennifer hosted during our time there. Among them was Jack, a British carpenter who was fixing Jennifer’s doors. His interests include Flight of the Conchords, horses, and homemade wines; soon, we were all fast friends.

Read-alouds became a favorite for the Wwwoofers of Thames. We selected kids’ books from the library for Genoveva (who are we kidding? We love children's books as much as the next kid.) We’d come home from that literary haven with J.K. Rowling, Shel Silverstein poems, fairy tale spoofs, and the epic saga of Paddington Bear (of “Darkest Peru” – it turns out that story’s awkwardly outdated.)


In short, daily routine was awake, chow down on muesli, serve customers in the shop (creating small talk a requisite and enjoyable component of the job), clean up the shop, perhaps help Jennifer with catering at the golf club, and then a tasty, family-style dinner with Jennifer, Genoveva, and anyone else who had come to call. Each weekend brought something new: A Fun Run (if you had fun, you won, please don’t ask us what place we came in), Miranda Hot Springs (naturally heated, blissful swimming pools), a hike through an old goldmine (for a few hours, we were intrepid explorers channeling Frodo and Sam), and a weekend trip through the Coromandel Peninsula…