© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

Maybe Yudit thought we would need to do the same? I guess we did spend quite a lot of our wages on alcohol at the shop, we used to buy this sweet wine called Fantasia. It was so cheap, and it tasted similar to cider or perry, delicious. But I don’t think we bought too much food, neither of us were overweight, we weren’t greedy. We were working eight hours a day, and it was extremely hard manual work, so we needed to eat well. Anyway, there’s nothing more depressing than not being able to cook, eat, and enjoy good food. Richard and I had spent a few days picking apples, and then we were moved to picking cucumbers. The cucumbers were grown in green houses, which were situated much nearer to our accommodation. There weren’t that many cucumber plants, and after a few hours we had almost finished picking all of them. There were four of us working together, Richard, me, and two Palestinians. They didn’t seem so chatty for the first part of the day, we hoped they were okay. After lunch we found out why, they said we were working too fast, and we should slow down. They told us that if we continued to work so fast there might not be enough work for them to do tomorrow. Then they asked us how much we were getting paid an hour. We were surprised to learn that we were being paid substantially more than they were, and we were being paid peanuts. It was sad to think they were being treated so poorly. The way Yudit and Moshe spoke to them left a lot to be desired too. Richard and I agreed to work at a slower pace, it made no difference to us anyway. However fast we worked Yudit always complained about something, we couldn’t do anything right. Over the next few days we offered our Palestinian friends food, drinks, and other things, but they wouldn’t take anything from us. They worked so hard and were very proud, and funny too. We didn’t always get to work with them, we were swapped round a lot. Every morning when we were told what we would be doing that day,Yudit or Moshe would say they were going out for the day and then leave us to it. I don’t think they ever went very far, because they would come and check on us every hour or so, they didn’t trust anyone! So far we had picked apples, tomatoes, and cucumbers, now it was time for something different, flowers. Richard and I were driven to one of the furthest fields on the farm. We were taken inside a huge greenhouse, it was full of flowers, and it smelt so good. We were each given a tiny pair of cutters, and then Moshe got down on the ground to show us how to cut them correctly. We had to cut a few to show him, he said they were perfect, we couldn’t believe it, and then he left us to it. We spent hours cutting flowers, it was surprisingly hard work because we had to get so low to the ground. The flowers were growing up from the soil through sheets of plastic, which had small squares cut in them. We had to be careful not to cut these thin strips of plastic, as they would stay where they were and be reused. Yudit came to see us after lunch and went mad, she said we were working too slow! We had found these empty plastic crates which we were using as seats. She didn’t like that, she took them away, and made us sit back on the floor. We were very pleased when the days work was over. That evening Yudit brought me some mail. My mummy had sent us a letter, and some magazines, and other things. I replied to her straight away, and took the letter to Yudit, she had offered to post it for me. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all? Unfortunately it turned out she was. When we returned home we found out that we had been sent lots of parcels that were never passed on to us, nice! I wanted to phone my mummy and asked to use the phone, Yudit had told us that we could use the phone whenever we wanted to. Surprise surprise, Yudit said that the phone line was playing up, I should leave her the number, and she would let me know when I could speak to my mummy. I never did get to speak to her, except for on one of our rare trips to a nearby town, when I used a pay phone. We were really beginning to feel like members of the family, just like the agency said we would! We could definitely see why the two guys we met at the agency did a bunk. It was not that pleasant living and working at this Moshav, Yudit and Moshe were always in bad moods. They were very busy planning the wedding of their eldest son, maybe that caused their bad moods? It was about this time that things really started to decline, Laurent had been there for quite a long time and decided to go home to Switzerland. His departure seemed to upset Yudit and Moshe, they became even more hostile toward everyone, especially Egar. Now there was just the three of us living together, we had a lot more funmoutside our working hours. Richard and Egar were great friends, they managed to communicate, with Richard speaking odd words of Russian that Egar had taught us, and he used to try and use the English we had taught him. They used to spend hours playing chess, Richard usually won, but this didn’t bother Egar he was happy having a friend. I think he was beginning to miss Russia, he had a brother who he obviously loved very much because he talked about him all the time. He had wanted to come to Israel for so long, to belong, and he was feeling let down and sad. I remember one morning we were just about to leave for work, and as we came out of our accommodation we heard lots of loud shouting. It was Moshe, he was shouting and being very aggressive, standing right up close to Egar’s face. We couldn’t understand everything that was being said, but we understood enough to know we had to do something. Richard ran over and dragged Moshe away from Egar. Poor Egar was shaking and almost in tears. I tried to calm Moshe down, he was still screaming, very obscene words in the direction of Egar. Eventually Moshe calmed down a little and got into the van, slamming his door. He shouted to Richard that we should get in the van and go to work. We told him we weren’t going anywhere with him, he needed to apologise to Egar. He said he would sort it out later, we needed to get to work. We refused to go with him, we said we would walk up the the field later. We took Egar back inside, talked to him, asked him if we could help him in any way, and made him a drink. We chatted with Egar for a long time, he said he was feeling better. A couple of hours later we all went to work. Everything seemed fine by that evening, Moshe had apologised to Egar, and was joking and laughing with him. The next few days were good, there was no more shouting or abuse, everyone seemed happier, and the hard work continued. Richard and Egar spent the evenings playing cards or chess, and drinking lots of vodka, well Richard drank lots of Vodka, Egar not so much, we questioned his Russian roots! Egar had always been quite noisy during the night, banging around in his room with one thing or another, it didn’t bother us, we didn’t take much notice. It had been a week or so since Moshe had cleared the air with Egar, and Richard and I were awoken by the most almighty thumping on our bedroom door. Obviously as we had been in a deep sleep, we were very bleary eyed. Richard jumped out of bed grabbing some clothes, thinking it would be Egar standing outside our door, maybe we had overslept? I was in the process of getting up to get dressed, Richard opened our door, it was Moshe standing there. He said he was walking past our accommodation block and he noticed the light was on in Egar’s room, and he didn’t like the look of what he saw through the net curtains at the window. Richard told me to stay where I was. Moshe let Richard go to Egar’s room in front of him. Richard knocked, no answer. Richard opened the door, and I heard him and Moshe gasp. I’ll never forget that sound. Egar was dead. He had hung himself. Richard immediately came and told me what had happened. We couldn’t believe it, we were stunned. We were both so sad. Richard shut the door of Egar’s room, and led me outside, he didn’t want me to see him, I wish Moshe had done the same for Richard. We were taken into Moshe’s house, Yudit was woken and told what had happened. We sat in their lounge whilst they fired questions at us. It was awful, we were both in shock, our friend was dead. We didn’t really feel like talking, and especially not to them. They made us tea, and we waited for the police. When the police arrived they asked us lots fo questions, in the presence of Yudit and Moshe, who never took their eyes off of us. Then the police handed some forms to Yudit, she handed them to us to sign. We looked at them, obviously they were written in Hebrew. We said we wouldn’t sign them, as we couldn’t read them, and handed them back to Yudit. She tried to frighten us into signing them, telling us that if we didn’t we would be arrested. Even if that was true, we were not about to sign something we couldn’t read. After lots of talking between Yudit, Moshe, and the police, they left. By now poor Egar’s body had been taken away. We wanted to go back to our accommodation, to be on our own. Yudit didn’t seem to want us to leave, she kept making drinks, saying we could leave soon. Hours passed, we were full to the brim with tea, we wanted to go. Finally we went back to our place, Yudit told us to come back later that evening to watch a film with them. We didn’t really feel like it, but we went anyway. We watched an old Robert Redford film with English subtitles, it didn't end until after 2am.

Oceania