Eating Chicken Shit – aka the worst job ever

I often get asked what’s the worst job I’ve ever done. I don’t have to think for long to answer. Cleaning chicken sheds on a kibbutz in Israel is by far my worst job ever. No contest.

The chicken sheds were the size of Wembley Stadium.

It was cold, but when you are given a brush and told to start sweeping something that size, you know you’re not going stay cold for long.

For the best part of a week, six hours a day, we swept. And swept. And swept. The movement – swing out arms, pull arms in, step back, repeat – and the monotonous swish, swish, swish of the brushes scraping the hard concrete were hypnotic. It was impossible to hear the tinny radio way over in the far corner and we were spread too far out to chat. Not that it mattered as chatting would have involved opening our mouths; it was bad enough breathing the chicken poop in and feeling it settle in the back of your throat without having it take a direct route through your mouth.

The fine ammonia powder got everywhere. As we brushed it created a cloud of dust that got into every pore, into our hair and ears as well up our noses. The taste stayed for days afterwards. No matter how many drinks we drank or how much strongly-flavoured food we ate, that taste overpowered everything.

As the minutes merged into hours and the hours merged into days and our blisters merged into callouses, we’d blink and realise it was time for a break or for lunch, or even the end of the day. Time stood still, yet at the end of the day it seemed like no time had passed at all.

That blank time allowed the mind to wander. So many memories, thoughts, stories would flit and flicker their way through my mind. I’d forget where I was and be transported to places I’d been to years ago, to my childhood or my wild teenage years. And sometimes I’d be transported to the future, to places I wanted to visit and to places I had no idea I wanted to visit.

It struck me how quickly the human mind turns in on itself when it has no external stimulus. Would this be how I’d cope if I ever found myself in gaol? Or if I was stranded on a desert island? (If I ever have to choose between the two, I’ll have the desert island please.)

The breaks were always welcome. Time to stretch out stiffening limbs, then sit down with a cup of bad coffee and chat. Usually about the chicken sheds – we couldn’t get away from thinking about them even on a break. And we all found we were having the same experiences. A kind of multi-tasking meditation. Why sit and do nothing, when you could meditate and sweep a six inch deep pile of chicken shit off a floor the size of a football stadium at the same time?

As all things do, sweeping the chicken shed came to an end. We stretched, yahooed and got ready for our next task.

This time we were outside. Yes! Fresh air! But it was cold. And raining.

We had to clean all the metal tubing and piping that takes feed, drugs, water and who knows what else, into the sheds once a new batch of chickens are installed.

The small metal parts were freezing to hold and the taps we were washing them under only flowed with cold water. As icy raindrops pelted the back of my neck and cold drips ran from my hair down my face, and as my fingers slowly went numb and I worried about frostbite as I held cold metal under cold water, we talked (yes, we were close now) and actually found ourselves reminiscing about the good old days of sweeping and thinking. Yes, we decided. Eating chicken shit was preferable to this.

Finally the days of cleaning the chicken sheds came to an end. Stretching out on the veranda of the volunteer accommodation, sipping a well-deserved beer we watched as smoke curled upwards in the distance.

It was coming from the chicken sheds.

They were on fire.

They burnt completely to the ground.

Electrical fault they said.

I won’t repeat what we said.

Beaufort – a film

A film about the Israeli’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

I watched this on iplayer recently. The film is about the final part of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Beaufort is an an old Crusader fortress that has been used by the Israelies as a modern day outpost complete with a maze of underground tunnels and lookout posts manned by dummies (to make it look like there are more soldiers than there actually are).

The film follows the daily routines of the soldiers; their hopes, fears and dilemmas. Most of the IDF has already pulled out and the soldiers at Beaufort are living in a temporal no-man’s land not knowing whether today, tomorrow or a day next week, will be their last day in Lebanon. They dream of what they will do when they are home, their families and girlfriends. The boredom is frequently offset by regular Hizbullah attacks. Although it is common knowledge that the Israelies are pulling out, the attacks have been stepped up so Hizbullah can take the credit and say they were responsible for chasing the Israelies out. At least that what the soldiers theorise. Of course the attacks lead to deaths which seem all the more tragic in light of the fact that a few days later the young men would have been home and safe.

It was often hard to remember that these soldiers were indeed young men, most of them being only eighteen. The commander of the outpost was only 22 and yet bore the huge burden of being responsible for the lives and deaths of those under his command. His final task is to supervise the laying of explosives and the complete destruction of Beaufort as they leave.

It was a moving film to watch and it’s no surprise to learn since that it has won plenty of awards. As far as I can make out the main events in the film such as the actual withdrawal are based on fact, but the soldiers themselves are only loosely based on real characters and the incidents that happen to individuals, although representative of real incidents, are fictionalised accounts.

The film is in Hebrew with English subtitles and runs for just over two hours.