Ecuador: Sleep deprivation and unoriginal roosters!

I have never experienced fatigue like I did on my final week of working on the farm. It was the kind of exhaustion where if I blinked longer than necessary I would fall into a deep coma and not awaken until the year 2011 when the world will be governed by the robot – human race mentioned in my previous blog entry. I was dull, listless and mentally retarded. My body ached, lifting my legs felt like trying to wrestle them out of quick sand and it were as though someone had replaced my arms with heavy concrete boulders. Who would have thought that three weeks of sleep deprivation, rationed food, breaking and lifting rocks, carrying bags of sand, weeding full fields by hand and shovelling mounds and mounds of shit would be so hard?

"Help me! I have work to do and I can´t move!"

There were five of us volunteers (unselfish people who deserve your respect) sharing a bedroom in a bamboo structure with gaping holes where in any ordinary place a wall should be, but on the farm “inside is the new outside” it seems. If it wasn’t the cats that climbed in through the gaps to fight in the middle of the bedroom that kept me awake at night, it was the insects, some as large as mice and others with horns trying to bulldoze their way through my mosquito net and if it wasn’t the insects it was the frogs croaking, which sounded more like giants retching or worst of all, it was the roosters.

These little delights would kick off at 3:30am each morning and “Cockadoodle-doo” their asses off well past 5:40am which was when I had to get up to feed the pigs. One rooster in particular was extremely vocal and had a distinctive hoarse voice, that of perhaps a very heavy smoker. He was usually the first to start in the wee small hours with a loud and proud “Cockadoodle-doo,” the” doo” part was croaky and deep and sounded like it should have been followed by the cough up of some phlegm. One second later, another rooster, fainter and further away would respond back with a “Cockadoodle-doo”. The smoker rooster would reply with.....what a surprise “Cockadoodle-doo” and this unoriginal and very loud exchange would go on for hours and hours. “Have they nothing else to say to one another?” I thought as I pressed my ear plugs (which by the way are called “Tampons for the ears” in South America) further and further towards my cortex.

A rooster smoking and also looking homosexual.

As I lay there, my efforts to sleep being over ruled by this broken record of “Cockadoodle-doos,” I imagined a hard of hearing hen standing beside the smoker rooster asking “What did he say?” referring to the neighbouring rooster. The smoker rooster tells her “He said ‘Cockadoodle-doo’”. “Ooooh!” she replies, “Well, what are you going to say back?” “I think I’ll say ‘Cockadoodle-doo’” he tells her as he puffs on a cigar. “Good one,” she replies.

The next morning in the coop, the hens gather around for a gossip. One says to another “Did you hear what that bastard rooster from up the road said last night?” “What?” the hens ask in anticipation. “He said ‘Cockadoodle-doo!’” Gasps of horror and surprise. “He did not!” they exclaim in disbelief. “He did, I tell you” says the hard of hearing hen delighted to be the centre of attention but wheezing from years of passive smoking.

Please roosters, I’ve listened to you “Cockadoodle-doo” for weeks now, try something different, “Cockadoodle-dandy, cockadoodle-don’t”, just branch out, there are other words out there and if you’re intelligent enough to log onto a computer to read this blog, you’re smart enough to expand your vocabulary.

My morning job last week was to feed the pigs and clean out their pens. I would flop out of bed in the black of the morning before breakfast and shuffle still half asleep over to where they live. These pigs are bigger than any I have ever seen before, they’re actually more like pink horses. By mid week they had started to associate me with getting fed and would growl, snarl and grunt when they saw me, standing on their hind legs, drooling with their front trotters placed on the wall whilst they tried to climb over it (fat chance fatties). A more needy or insecure person may have taken their actions as a compliment, but I have to admit that I was scared of them especially as last weekend I watched “The Silence of the Lambs 2”, which includes a horrifying scene where pigs eat a human to death. I fed them their wet oat type meal, which I had to stir with my entire arm (elbow deep) as quickly as possible, trying not to let them sense my fear and shuffled back to bed for a 20 minute nap.

"Good morning Niamh, I want to eat you".

It wasn’t only me who was feeling exhausted during the last week, all the other volunteers were the same. Whenever there wasn’t a shovel in our hands, or large rocks in our arms, we were napping. We would sit around waiting for our orders from the local farm guys, our eyes shut, heads bent forward, not even talking to one another, our energy zapped. Luckily as a group we all got along really well, which made the hard work all the easier as we would all laugh about it. Throughout the three weeks we bonded over tough work and various types of ailments, Julie, Susan and Shad all picked up blood sucking ticks, Shads being located on his rear end, which had to be removed using a tweezers by Dario (man who runs the farm) and Julies which was on her back was removed by me, our friendship reaching new levels as a result. Jutta got stung by something on her foot, which made walking difficult, Henry, Lynn (who kept falling face first into puddles) and Luke all picked up colds, which excited medicine man Dario as he got to practice his home remedies and I got a large splinter wedged in my foot that I am still ignoring. Another special moment we all shared last week was when a dead goat was discovered on the farm and we all pitched in to dig its grave. It was one of those typical “Here I am in Ecuador digging a grave for a goat” moments, you know the type, dime a dozen.

Susan (volunteer) catching 40 winks in between shovelling shit.

Luke catching a few quiet moments.

But not everyone on the farm was tired.

So, with very special times shared together we said our sad goodbyes and left the farm last Friday for our various destinations. Armed with a little more knowledge about our planet and alot more hatred for roosters, the very final leg of my trip awaits, Cockadoodle-WHU!!