Update on Volunteering

Now on my tenth day of volunteering with the turtle project in Katelios, which means that I have five days left before I move to the other turtle project in Argostoli. I will be sorry to leave here, because I’m getting on very well with everyone, and I like the work, but I’m also looking forward to getting involved with the other volunteers over there, most of whom I’ve been in contact with a little bit, and they all seem like good fun as well. Plus I’ll get to live out of my tent for two weeks, and who wouldn’t be excited about that.

Just to give a little bit of an idea of the kind of work we’re doing I’ll outline a typical day in the Katelios project.

06:00: One pair of volunteers leave the accommodation (meeting the four volunteers from nightshift on their way down the hill to walk the length of the beach), looking for any signs of turtle activity that may have been missed during the night, as well as taking accurate details of the locations of any new nests so that they can monitored during hatching season.  They also keep an eye out for rubbish, which they collect and dispose of, and if there is anything out of the ordinary they’ll report on that too.  They also give information about the project and the turtles to any early birds they find on the beach at that time of the morning.

06:00: Another pair of volunteers get on bikes and cycle for about an hour (part of which is up a very long, steep hill) to get to one of the other nesting beaches.  They walk the length of that beach, then take kayaks to the next nesting beach about a kilometre away, and walk along there.  Once again they are looking for signs of turtle activity, and also taking note of anything significant or unusual, such as evidence of people having camped or driven on the beach during the night.  The reason that this is a problem is that noise and lights on the beach at night will deter turtles from nesting, and a vehicle that passes over a nest will pack the sand around the eggs, making it harder for hatchlings to dig their way out, and also removing the air from around the nest and possibly crushing the eggs.

09:00-13:30: One volunteer opens the Environmental Centre – a converted school building now used as an information centre for people who would like to learn more about wildlife on Kefalonia and more specifically about the loggerhead sea-turtles.   It’s often quite a quiet shift so it’s the perfect time for reading and writing postcards or blog entries.

17:00-20:00: The school is opened once again for the evening.

17:30:  Evening beach shift.  A pair of volunteers take to the main nesting beach again, this time to remove any obstacles that could put off the turtles as they make their way up the beach to nest, i.e. filling in holes that people have dug, knocking down sandcastles (you get some very impressive ones) and removing litter.  My favourite bit is probably the knockage of sandcastle-age, the last time I was here we found a sand CITY, with cobbled avenues and tree-lined streets and everything.  It took us about ten or fifteen minutes to knock the whole thing down, but part of the reason was because we were pretending to be Godzilla for a lot of it.

22:00: Night shift.  Four volunteers start in the middle of the main nesting beach, and one pair patrols the west end, the other the east in single file, about five metres apart.  The walk usually takes about 20-25 minutes, and then they rest until 23:00 when they walk back to the centre again.  This tooing and froing on the hour continues all through the night, until they find tracks, when the lead person will investigate to see if there is a second track (indicating that the turtle has been and gone).  If there is only one they then creep as carefully and as silently as possible along the track to see if a turtle is nesting, and observe it until it has reached the egg laying stage.  Once the turtle begins to lay it goes into a trance state and the second volunteer is given the signal to approach so they can begin collecting data (date; time; measurements of carapace; tag number - if tagged already, if not then the turtle’s flipper is tagged and the new tag number is recorded).  All activity around the turtle is carried out in darkness and with a red light when necessary, as they can’t see this very well.

The rest of the time we hang around the accommodation (possibly eating the apricots off the tree, or figs from the tree up the road) or snorkel or hitch into Skala, the nearest town for shopping.  In short, it's not a bad deal.

In other news have a few more turtle pictures to share.

Returns

Met who I could in Athens, including some former students, mostly from my advanced class.  I also dropped out to the school to say hello.  The school receptionist very nicely asked me if I wanted to pop my head in to one of the classes to see some more pupils of mine and one of the teachers.  I agreed, and was invited in to sit in the class for a while.   

Just to explain a little bit about how the system worked in the school I was teaching in – I was the native language speaker, and took each class (approximately half the classes in the school – the other native speaker had the other half) once a week for an hour, or two hours for exam classes, to work on their communication skills (speaking and writing).  They had the rest of their classes with a Greek teacher who would do grammar and various other fun things with them, the theory being that native speakers cannot teach grammar (a theory 100% accurate in this case).  This meant that I had more students than any of the Greek teachers (in excess of one hundred names and faces), and come report time, had to write an account of their progress and speak to a parent for each and every one of them.  By Christmas I had still been struggling to remember student’s names when I had them sitting in front of me in a classroom, never mind being able to give an accurate description of what they were doing, and I also had not realised that I should be taking notes of their grades until half way through the first semester, so I didn’t even have those to rely on.  For the most part meeting the parents wasn’t too bad, because I always met them with my Greek counter-part, who usually chattered away to them first allowing me to catch key words of the conversation such as ‘grammatiki’ (grammar) or ‘lexikos’ (vocabulary), which would then allow me to make it look like I knew what I was talking about, spouting out things like:

“Well, George’s work is quite good, but he needs to focus on his grammar.” [Parent and Greek teacher nod]  “He also needs to focus on his vocabulary as he has been having problems in that area.” [Parent and Greek teacher nod once again in agreement] 

Now, sometimes I’d leave it there, but other times I’d feel things were going really well and I’d get carried away and decide to add something of my own, such as:

“...but he also needs to pay more attention in class…” [Parent and teacher’s eyes widen, teacher turns head to look at me, amazed, and tells me she’s never had that problem with George] So I’d back-peddle rapidly with something like, “…but what child doesn’t need to pay more attention, haha.”

Now, the teacher giving the lesson I dropped in on the other day was the one I hated doing parent-teacher meetings with (the most), because he always let me say what I thought first, before he gave his report.  I never thought that he did it purposefully to upset me or make me uncomfortable.  However, that all changed this week when, once he had me sitting in the class he asked me if I could remember the students in the class – and I did recognise most of them – and then went on to ask if I could remember their names.  Which I couldn’t.  So the kids all looked disappointed, I looked like a twat, and he sat at the top of the class with a big smile on his face.  He is, as the Greeks would say, a giant malaka.

In other news, the other volunteers travelling from Athens managed to coordinate ourselves, and get out to Kefalonia with only minor complications with buses, ferries and camping.   But we got here, and are now already five days in.  I’ve been out snorkelling in the evening three times now, and have seen four turtles, one of which was a green turtle, which doesn’t really belong in these waters, but seems quite happily lost, and he’s nice to see, so it’s alright.

The first tracks and nest were discovered this morning, which is terrific as it means that night shifts will begin tonight, and I’m first up.  Exciting times.