Heatwave

The heat has been borderline unbearable.  It is 40 degrees, plus a titch of humidity and no air conditioning.  I have never had to live this kind of heat before (as Indonesia averaged about 33-35 degrees) and the pain of the extra five and the sweating that comes with it is highly uncomfortable.  It means you barely sleep at night and then barely function throughout the day.  It makes wanting to exercise or be productive a remote possibility.  However, Joe and I had made plans on Friday to meet up with Eser (as we hadn’t seen him since before Ramadhan started) so we headed for lunch and then to meet him at the pub.  I messaged him when we got there, but by the time we had finished our first beer, he had messaged back to inform us he was in Darende (a couple of hours away) because he had gotten the time wrong.  That was a bit of a bummer, as the pub is not cheap, but we had a couple beers and played backgammon before heading home.

After a long work day on Saturday, I enjoyed two days off.  As I went for a walk on Sunday evening, I ran into one of my old students, who along with her mother and neighbours, was busy de-pitting apricots. 

The neighbours and the apricots.

  I went and sat and chatted for a bit (being sent home with many many apricots) and promised to come back the next day to help- it seemed like an authentic Malatya experience, and I didn’t have anything else to do, so Monday at noon, I headed over and spent a pleasant few hours eating, drinking tea, and de-pitting apricots.  

Nazli and I, doing our work.

After a couple of hours, I had a wicked backache and sore fingers and these women had been working since 7am and would continue until sunset at 8pm, and they had been doing this for a week and had another week to go.  For each crate they finished they earned 5TL (about $2.50) and could each average between 4-9 crates a day.  It seemed like a lot of work.  I learned a lot about apricots- the size, colour (dark ones are expensive) and watched them crack open the pits to get nuts out.  I could have sworn they were almonds (they look and taste like almonds) but they are not- and in large quantities can be quite harmful as they contain cyanide (fun fact),  however eating a few a day won’t hurt you.  I never knew there were nuts inside pits, so that was a very interesting discovery.  All in all, it was an interesting experience that was considerably more tiring than I had anticipated, but was a great way to get to know some of the women in the neighbourhood.

Apricot pits.  This is how many they had done so far.