Week one in the books

I've now completed my first week as a conservation volunteer. Woohoo! I'm working with a company called Conservation Volunteers New Zealand (very original), and they work all around both the north and south islands. At times people come to them for help and other times CoVoNZ is the one reaching out to the local communities and small farmers that need the help.

The week began with some local work in Christchurch on Monday at the local wildlife sanctuary just doing some weeding and such--which down here is referred to as release work. I guess the sound of release work doesn't seem as strenuous or dirty as weeding does, but it's the same thing. Anyway, after our first day we drove down the coast for a few hours to our accommodation for the first two nights: a Marae. A Marae is a shared house put up by the Maori people, the native people of New Zealand. When we arrived we were called into the house by the head female who chanted and sang for a few minutes. When we went inside--where the men were supposed to sit in the front and the women in the back--the lead male of the household took over and sang in the Maori language as well; he later explained that the process was about welcoming visitors to the Marae, blessing them upon entering, and thanking them for coming to share this cultural experience. We finished with a close handshake and a touching of the foreheads as the final welcome into the house. Quite an experience, very welcoming, and enjoyable.

For the next few days we did basically the same thing each day: lots of release work and planting all sorts of plants and shrubs. Some days we worked on local Maori farmland that had been flooded in recent months, and others we worked on helping out local community projects to improve the run-off situation into the local river. It's very much like gardening at hope, except it happens to be winter here so its about 35-45 degrees during the day and rainy. The kind of situation where no matter what you are wearing you are going to be cold. It kinda stinks, but once you get to moving around you warm up and things are good.

But the best part of this experience, as cliche as it may sound, is that I really know that I'm giving back a little bit and helping make a difference for these farmers and communities. After working on our last day the local volunteer coordinator showed us what our project would look like when it was done. We had been working in a marshy swamp area and the final result was a beautiful river covered on each side by grassy lawns and ferns and shrubs. It's nice to know that even if it's a small difference we are helping out in some ways towards the greater goal of the project. It helps you get through those freezing mornings when you'd rather be sitting in by a fire and drinking hot chocolate. Luckily for us that's what we do at the end of each day.