Gardening and foresting on sunny mountain with seaview, Algarve

Reino Unido

3

Beautiful location, a homestead where they grow a variety of fruit and veg and rear chickens. It didn't feel like much of a host/volunteer relationship as they live very separately to the volunteers. The project is very remote, so it's difficult to get anywhere on days off unless you walk an hour each way to the bus stop. I enjoyed the gardening but felt there was a gender divide where the men were given the forestry and building work and the women were assigned gardening and cleaning - it was implied jobs would be taken in turns but this didn't happen as much as I'd hoped.

hace más de 1 año

Ines respondido

During your stay with us the forest work consisted of building pathways, which means to hammer stakes into the earth with a sledgehammer and to carve out the wet clay with a hoe. This is extremely hard physical work and is why we did not ask you to work in the forest. For lighter work like pruning trees or even dragging loggs out of the forest, we do actually mix the groups. We did not mean to withhold you from exciting tasks but to protect you from injury and exhaustion. Sorry if that was a wrong approach, we will keep it in mind for the future.

Reino Unido

3

Johannes and Ines are very individual people with a great vision for their land. They are very remote and live, cook and spend freetime completely separately to the volunteers + it's an hours walk to the nearest bus stop so pack snacks and stuff to do as Ines shops for you. Sometimes the language barrier and cultural differences caused a few communication issues, but work hours were always respected. All the work is gender segregated, which isn't for me, but for them it's spiritual. It's a beautiful area but no local contact, and felt like an employer/employee relationship not host/volunteer

hace más de 1 año

Ines respondido

I would like to clarify that we do not generally "gender segregate" the work and never due to spiritual reasons (what kind of spirituality should that be?), but because we did not want to impose on you the work with the sledgehammer or chopping out stony clay soil. We had mixed groups in the forest for lighter work than building pathways.
As for spending free time with our volunteers, we offer tantric meditations (which you declined), also we offer the hot pool in the evening, which you visited once only.

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