An Idyll for volunteer Western
The WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is a movement launched by Columbia in 1971 offering the opportunity for volunteers to volunteer on farms practicing organic farming in exchange shelter, cover and sharing a green lifestyle, as summarized very well the slogan: "living, learning, sharing organic lifestyles" (Live, learn and share a green lifestyle). Since 2000, Wwoof is a global network of national organizations whose mission is to bring together Volunteers and ecological farms (website accessible here). In Turkey, this mission is devoted to the association in charge of the project Bugday Tatütas containing the main principles in its charter Wwoof (website accessible here). One can read such as "home farms [...] want to expand knowledge and implementation of organic production in their communities include families who live and work [...] with an ecological conscience "and wish to convey. For us who wanted to discover what this activity typically Mediterranean olive harvest, which godsend to be able to do so by contributing to a proposed ecological farm and sharing the daily life of a Turkish family!
We then disembark in the small town of Datca where we find Ali, owner of the farm Knidia located at the tip of the peninsula which separates the Mediterranean Sea to the Aegean Sea. The place is paradise: the farm is surrounded by nature only 20 minutes walk from the sea and 45 minutes from the nearest village. Located within walking distance from the ancient site of Cnidos, all this natural area is protected: it is forbidden to build new homes and connect the existing national network of water and electricity. Farm Knidia is electrically powered by solar panels and a few small wind turbine, the water is piped from a small natural spring by an ingenious system of pipes. Everything is done to attract the voluntary loving Western ecology of the small wooden bridge to the western style toilet.
Workforce cheap and clash of civilizations
However, from our first meeting with Ali at the Yacht Club Datca, we began to doubt his sincerity: he had more pace a businessman connected as a gentleman farmer. But we were not victims of our own prejudices about the poor Turkish peasants? This feeling will soon be confirmed when we discovered that nobody lives in this ghostly farm, and other volunteers have never even met Ali, known as de facto "Ali The Ghost." We are far from sharing the daily life of a family of Turkish farmers who have decided to engage in organic farming: the evening volunteers are left alone on the farm and taste the meals during the day by Noura, simply used to Ali. We are not there to contribute to a project development environmental benefit of local people but we were picking olives to pay Ray Ban Ali who understood very well the whole point of using the cheap labor of volunteers naive. Choosing this role, we quickly dubbed us the "Stupid western volunteers".
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| A Stupid Western volunteer |
experience loses its meaning and finally we pose a real problem of consciousness. We work eight hours a day with farmers from the nearby village used by the farm. The first day we are 13 fields, 8 volunteers and 5 staff, but day after day the quota of local employees is reduced by half. We learn that Fatima and Aisha did not return to work because the boss has decided that there were enough volunteers ... Quickly accumulate questions: are we not taking us despite the work of local employees? What is the shortfall for them and they have another source of income? The farm would it not profitable without the work of volunteers? We glean some information by questioning the employees and especially Annette, Voluntary stambouliotte the first time, who knows well the firm and acted as interpreter. But employees quickly receive our discomfort and, as a victim of Stockholm syndrome, eager to defend the boss, a "good man"! They change speech by saying that Fatima and Aisha left because they had other work to be done elsewhere, that anyway they are not poor, they have their own trees, and that is a work for Ali extra single. There is established a kind of misunderstanding: while volunteers naively take the interests of employees, they have the feeling of being tried and lost in justifications. They say they are happy that volunteers are more numerous each year because it benefits the development of the farm and that next year there will be more work for them. Employees will even inform our reservations Ali and the latter we address a sermon via telephone Anette: "If you're not happy you're free to go," no kidding! The situation starts to become confrontational, especially as volunteers have not been briefed on the rules of the farm, including the fact that they must also clean the toilets.
Finally, we tried to estimate the savings in using volunteering: a harvest of 20 days with 7 volunteers whose productivity is viewed 2 times lower than that of a local worker, the economy is about TL 3000 (1500 Euros), which is far from negligible in terms of the average wage in Turkey ($ 430, Source: http://www.invest.gov.tr ). The network seems surprising Wwoof that some states have been "problematic considering Wwoof as a clandestine organization of migrant workers" (Website of Wwoof). But after this experience, we find even more astonishing that the Wwoof does not put on guard against the potential risk posed by such a manipulation in terms of destabilization of local labor markets especially in less developed regions where agriculture is the main employer.
In search of eco-farm
But such reticence could be overcome economic if we had the feeling of participating in a real draft environmental preservation and development of organic farming. However, we find that everyone grows and harvests olives in the same way on the peninsula and we're not even sure there is no use of chemical fertilizers. In reality, the constraints posed by the standards of environmental protection are presented as a true owner's will to live ecologically. So while the website says the huts that house the volunteers have been built to enable them to live closer to nature, it is actually because it is forbidden to build new homes, and in November the stormy nights can be quite ... Wet! So we joke about the concept of eco-farm: we are taking eco-showers (showers green) since we are forced to use a heater that works on a wood fire, employees use of eco-sticks (green perch ) in fact simple wooden poles to hit the trees, the pick-up is necessarily an eco-car, even if it runs on gasoline, not to mention the eco-bin where all our waste plastics are burned even ... We learn, however, that Ali was sent a troop of volunteers to clean the beach, that's green! But it's a stab in the water: in November she was again flooded with plastic and other empty beer cans lack of awareness or, more prosaically, litter. There are many traditional media waiting in a corner of the farm and sold widely website, but Ali is much too busy with his various affairs to rotate the volunteers and explain the production process of olive oil . The olives are pressed, like all of the peninsula, in the press of a neighboring village.
Above all we are frustrated by the lack of answers to our questions because the only one who would be able to enlighten us on the operation of the farm, the different varieties of olives, the production process, is eternally absent. One Sunday, one of her friends comes to visit us while we hang out with 4 legs to pick up those damn olives, she learns that he is doing the boat with her husband.
But what am I doing here!
Finally, we are faced with our own mistakes, what are we doing here if this is so at odds with our values? We should logically go, but we are, why? Is it because in reality we were looking for just the board and lodging free, and we hide this behind mobile dishonorable great humanist principles? There may be a bit of that, but there is also work experience
in the fields that we wanted to live, the acrid smell of olives on our stained clothing, sharing the effort allowed us to forge bonds of friendship fabulous. We certainly do not have any before the production of olive oil, but we come away less ignorant and naive as we arrived, formed a small family and, in time, we are sad to leave. Finally Ali in all this is not a bad guy but rather a malignant type that took advantage of an opportunity. It must still recognize her talent to have created this affair 8 years ago when he was left in ruins on the ground and everyone was crazy. This project has succeeded, it became a very lucrative business that is no longer to look from afar and no longer requires, as in the early days to call for volunteers!
But who wants to volunteer ?
And then there is this socio-cultural question: Is it possible to WWOOFing respecting the principles of this movement in Turkey? Indeed, one can easily think that the Turks have the crazy idea of embarking on such projects are relatively Westernized and educated people for having known of the existence of this movement. They speak English and certainly belong to a social class, they are landowners, community leaders and non-poor families have non-English speakers who truly need a volunteer to help grow their business. During this experiment, the responsible Project Tatütas we proposed another farm, because it suggested that 4 hours per day, requiring 40 TL per person (the price of a double room): one had simply pay to work. It should be emphasized here the role of the organization of Turkey which also leads Woofing their own thing without really ensuring that the principles of its Charter are respected in the field. So we had to pay 120 TL (60 Euros) registration fee to simply get in touch from the farm that we could easily find on the Internet only if we were a little smarter! However, it would be wrong to conclude that an incompatibility cultural and surely there are farms in Western Europe that also shamelessly exploit this bonanza. Similarly it is possible to contribute to Turkey to a true original project by sharing the daily life of a Turkish family as a volunteer, our Swiss friends have experienced in Kas few days after leaving Knidia. Finally, it was still great fun Turks we met later to learn that we had worked eight hours a day for free!
Finally, we tried to estimate the savings in using volunteering: a harvest of 20 days with 7 volunteers whose productivity is viewed 2 times lower than that of a local worker, the economy is about TL 3000 (1500 Euros), which is far from negligible in terms of the average wage in Turkey ($ 430, Source: http://www.invest.gov.tr ). The network seems surprising Wwoof that some states have been "problematic considering Wwoof as a clandestine organization of migrant workers" (Website of Wwoof). But after this experience, we find even more astonishing that the Wwoof does not put on guard against the potential risk posed by such a manipulation in terms of destabilization of local labor markets especially in less developed regions where agriculture is the main employer.
In search of eco-farm
But such reticence could be overcome economic if we had the feeling of participating in a real draft environmental preservation and development of organic farming. However, we find that everyone grows and harvests olives in the same way on the peninsula and we're not even sure there is no use of chemical fertilizers. In reality, the constraints posed by the standards of environmental protection are presented as a true owner's will to live ecologically. So while the website says the huts that house the volunteers have been built to enable them to live closer to nature, it is actually because it is forbidden to build new homes, and in November the stormy nights can be quite ... Wet! So we joke about the concept of eco-farm: we are taking eco-showers (showers green) since we are forced to use a heater that works on a wood fire, employees use of eco-sticks (green perch ) in fact simple wooden poles to hit the trees, the pick-up is necessarily an eco-car, even if it runs on gasoline, not to mention the eco-bin where all our waste plastics are burned even ... We learn, however, that Ali was sent a troop of volunteers to clean the beach, that's green! But it's a stab in the water: in November she was again flooded with plastic and other empty beer cans lack of awareness or, more prosaically, litter. There are many traditional media waiting in a corner of the farm and sold widely website, but Ali is much too busy with his various affairs to rotate the volunteers and explain the production process of olive oil . The olives are pressed, like all of the peninsula, in the press of a neighboring village.
Above all we are frustrated by the lack of answers to our questions because the only one who would be able to enlighten us on the operation of the farm, the different varieties of olives, the production process, is eternally absent. One Sunday, one of her friends comes to visit us while we hang out with 4 legs to pick up those damn olives, she learns that he is doing the boat with her husband.
But what am I doing here!
Finally, we are faced with our own mistakes, what are we doing here if this is so at odds with our values? We should logically go, but we are, why? Is it because in reality we were looking for just the board and lodging free, and we hide this behind mobile dishonorable great humanist principles? There may be a bit of that, but there is also work experience
in the fields that we wanted to live, the acrid smell of olives on our stained clothing, sharing the effort allowed us to forge bonds of friendship fabulous. We certainly do not have any before the production of olive oil, but we come away less ignorant and naive as we arrived, formed a small family and, in time, we are sad to leave. Finally Ali in all this is not a bad guy but rather a malignant type that took advantage of an opportunity. It must still recognize her talent to have created this affair 8 years ago when he was left in ruins on the ground and everyone was crazy. This project has succeeded, it became a very lucrative business that is no longer to look from afar and no longer requires, as in the early days to call for volunteers! But who wants to volunteer ?
And then there is this socio-cultural question: Is it possible to WWOOFing respecting the principles of this movement in Turkey? Indeed, one can easily think that the Turks have the crazy idea of embarking on such projects are relatively Westernized and educated people for having known of the existence of this movement. They speak English and certainly belong to a social class, they are landowners, community leaders and non-poor families have non-English speakers who truly need a volunteer to help grow their business. During this experiment, the responsible Project Tatütas we proposed another farm, because it suggested that 4 hours per day, requiring 40 TL per person (the price of a double room): one had simply pay to work. It should be emphasized here the role of the organization of Turkey which also leads Woofing their own thing without really ensuring that the principles of its Charter are respected in the field. So we had to pay 120 TL (60 Euros) registration fee to simply get in touch from the farm that we could easily find on the Internet only if we were a little smarter! However, it would be wrong to conclude that an incompatibility cultural and surely there are farms in Western Europe that also shamelessly exploit this bonanza. Similarly it is possible to contribute to Turkey to a true original project by sharing the daily life of a Turkish family as a volunteer, our Swiss friends have experienced in Kas few days after leaving Knidia. Finally, it was still great fun Turks we met later to learn that we had worked eight hours a day for free!
(Video humorous)
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