It's 8:30 in the morning. The sun is up, blazing in the sky. The Taiwan air is not only hot but very sticky. There is a small house surrounded by natural lakes, and manmade salt flats. You see a group of people wearing sweat stained shirts moving bags of salt into a small wooden shed. Those people were Jackie, Wen Ya, Yu An, Boss and me when went to the salt flats to clean up the area. There were bags of salt that were waiting to be moved by Jackie and me. Jackie and I placed giant bags of salt on a wheelbarrow, wheeled the bags toward a shed, then carried the bags into the shed. While we were doing that, Wen Ya and Yu An were having fun taking pictures of Jackie and me hard at work.
After that, we all started scooping mounds of salt into bags. The salt was drying in a hand-weaved basket. We would transfer the dry salt from the basket to the bags and tie it up. Then we moved those bags into the shed. There was a dilema for me when I was moving the bags into the shed. The bags of salt were heavy, yet the shed door was short. I was at risk of either bumping my head on the door while concentrating on moving the bag, or dropping the heavy salt bag on my feet while trying not to bump my head on the door.
Fortunately, I did not bump my head or drop a salt bag. Something else did happen while I was moving the recently dried salt into the shed. One of the tables in the shed broke when i placed a bag of salt on top of it. The table was already holding a dozen bags of salt, so I had to transfer those bags to other locations in the shed.
The labor was hard and a gained a newfound appreciation for the people that had to harvest salt in order to make a living. I appreciate salt more because I will think about moving giant bags of salt everytime i use it.
-Ethan
留言列表
