Diary (18th July 2024)
In the morning, I wake up to the roosters crowing at around 5am. I can hear the birds chirping incessantly from outside, and on rainy and windy days, the camper shakes so much that I feel the weather on my skin. Just outside, I see John and Johanna’s garden, which is full of flowers in a variety of colours. It looks messy in a way, but it’s probably very well thought out. It’s so beautiful.
The Huiberts has employees working there, not only Polish seasonal workers, but also three interns and many students from the neighbourhood. Summer is the high season, so there are especially many employees. There is a lot of diversity with people from different countries, with different backgrounds and skills.
I share a bathroom and kitchen with three interns, Fenu and Malya, who are from Madagascar and are studying at Réunion, and Heloisa, who is from Brazil. Heloisa studied agriculture in Brazil and her six months in the Netherlands will be over in August. She learned to drive a tractor to dig up bulbs while staying here. ‘The most important thing I learnt here was resilience and patience – when I came to the Netherlands from Brazil in March, it was cold and dark. You have to do physically demanding work every day. It rains a lot. But there was work that had to be done that day, and you put it into action every day. You can study academia at a university, but there were so many things I could only learn here.’ Heloisa told me in the kitchen. You are too good. I have a sore neck from weeding; will there ever be a day when I can learn RESILIENCE and PATIENCE?
Today I weeded the dahlias again. However, as the number of people who could ride in the “weed-pulling car” was limited, I worked in the morning without riding in the car. It’s so much nicer to pull weeds from the ground without riding the “weed-pulling car”. I thought about the Polish women in the car. In the afternoon I got in the car too and pulled the weeds around the dahlias.
