We get back from our last scuba dive of the day and look to see the jobs we have to prepare dinner. I look down the list and spot my name under “collect firewood”. Ok, this is probably just carrying already cut wood to the cooking place. It will be great, just a little manual labor. One of the staff members leads my group away from the main bure down this little path around some other buildings. He is carrying two axes in his hands. This is where my mind shifted from slight manual labor to extreme manual labor (at least for me, someone who has never cut wood before). He leads us up a path, or a slight opening in the brush since there was no real path. It rained that morning so the dirt was a little slippery. Maybe more than ‘a little slippery’ considering it took Ashley, Joe and I a while to climb that hill. I think we can all say we gained a little more flexibility after sliding into splits a few times during this climb. About five minutes later, 5 physically exhausted people finally made it up the hill, but that is when the “fun” started.

We started swinging those axes. “Collect firewood” should have been changed to “chopping firewood”. The person who led us to the site showed us where to cut and we all took turns, chopping away. Once we thought had good footing, we fell. Then the rain started. Here we are, in the middle of the forest with axes in hand, and the rain drenches us. Finally, we have all the wood we need and we climb higher up the mountain until we reach a path. So, with a log on our shoulders, axe and flip flops in our grasps, we descend down the path, hopefully towards the resort. At this point, we thought anything could really happen.

I am first in the line going down the hill. At first I thought this was an advantage because I would be down the hill first, but I could not have been more wrong. I was the first to test the soil and, well, the first to see how slippery it was. I guess I could say it was extremely slippery considering my position shifted from my feet to my butt a couple times. I think Brad was glad I was before him because he knew where all the soft spots were. We reach the bottom of the hill, and see everyone else. I would also like to add here that they were under a roof, dry as can be. We stroll in, dirt everywhere, out of breath, and it was extremely rewarding. This is what people do every day to eat and it was a great experience to be able to partake in this. In the moment, I definitely did not think this, but now I am very glad I got to do this.

The quite slippery downhill path.

– Madeleine