It was the last thing he thought would happen. He looked in his pants’ pockets, his suitcase and his backpack. It was nowhere to be found.
He retraced his steps up and down. Still, no sign of it.
Jonathan “J.D.” Drew sat down and thought. He knew he had his wallet when he got to New Zealand, but now he couldn’t find it anywhere. He was in a country he didn’t know, with no wallet, no money, no ID, just his book bag and the clothes on his back.
The recently graduated Drew sat down, worried about how he was going to feed himself and where this after-college vacation had taken a wrong turn.
Drew’s original plan was to travel around the country and possibly work at a diving company — a decision he came to after taking a scuba-diving course during his final semester. He’d always planned to travel a lot and work abroad, but he didn’t plan on losing his money supply on his first big trip.
“It was really bad. I was freaking out,” Drew said, remembering when he first realized he lost his wallet.
Drew can laugh about it now, but at the time, he said his whole world came to a standstill. After hours of searching, he knew he wasn’t going to find his wallet and decided he would have to call his parents to tell them the bad news.
“They keep bringing it up now. They’ll say ‘well, you weren’t able to hold on to your wallet while you were over there.'” Drew said, laughing. “They see it as irresponsible. It was my fault. I lost my wallet again on the same trip, so now they think I’m completely irresponsible.”
Drew’s parents said they would wire him some money, but until they did, he had to live on the little bit of money he had in his pants and bookbag.
Drew knew he had to come to a decision. He said he had to figure out what he was going to do about money for food and hotels. His options were limited.
“It was really scary,” he said.
A Twist of Fate While he was thinking of what he should do, Drew found a piece of paper in the hotel he was staying at that said “work on a sheep station, room and board paid for, hourly wages.” Drew knew nothing about sheep farming, but he said he decided to take a chance and call the number on the slip of paper.
“This was the best deal for me because I was looking for something,” he said. “I had to find somewhere I could stay for free or where I could work to stay. I could have done that in Christ Church but it would have been more expensive, and I wouldn’t [have] had any food.”
Drew told the man on the phone he would take the job without asking for all of the details of the job or figuring out where the farm was located.
“I didn’t even think about the fact that I didn’t know the guy,” Drew said, laughing.
The manager of the sheep farm, Rob — whose last name Drew was not sure of — and his son picked Drew up from Christ Church, where he was staying at the time.
When Drew reached the farm — which was located somewhere in the country, but he didn’t know specifically where –, he said he realized the farm and the job was not what he thought it was going to be.
He figured his job would be to take care of the sheep. Instead, he said he was told to remove fencing from around the giant spread of land. His job was to make half of the land a sheep farm and the other half a deer park where hunters could pay to come and shoot deer in an enclosed field.
“I think it’s horrible. I didn’t realize what they were doing until almost when I left,” he said.
Drew said they were also building a lodge when he was there. The lodge was for the “wives of the hunters to go on tours of the farm,” while the husbands hunted deer, according to him.
“That was the whole idea of the place,” he said. “While I was there, the first guest came up. We were told to not go up to the guests. They were supposed to get the whole lodge feeling.”
More Than Nine to Five
Drew said his normal day began about 6 a.m. He would get up, shower and eat toast with Nutella on it. Then he and his co-workers “had to take the sheep fence out,” for 10 hours a day on a farm that he said took 45 minutes to “drive from one end to the other.”
“We had to get those down so hunters and deer wouldn’t hurt themselves on the fence,” he said. “We probably took out miles and miles of fence.”
And at the end of the day, Drew said he would come back to the cabin exhausted ready to climb into bed.
Only once did Drew get to experience what he originally thought the job entailed — sheep herding. He said he went out with Rob’s son to herd the sheep by using a 4-wheeler — “the modern way to do it.”
Drew also herded the cattle on the farm “a couple of times.” He said he had to tag their ears so the farmer would know the cow’s age and what kind of shots it needed. According to Drew, the farmers have to know exactly how old the cows are and how many shots they’ve had. Drew watched as they “sent a couple off to the meat market.”
“I don’t think I could be a farmer because of that. I’ll eat meat, but when you’re there moving it around, standing next to it, it makes you think about it,” he said.
Drew spent his night in a small cabin he shared with two men from Israel and a Slavic man.
“[The] Slavic guy was crazy. He kept trying to tell how things were done. He said he escaped from the Eastern Block,” Drew said, laughing and covering his red face.
Drew said he avoided the Slav and hung out with the two Israelis, who had just “got out” of the Israeli army before coming to work on the farm. Spending time with them, according to Drew, was his favorite part of working on the sheep farm. Drew said this gave him an opportunity to notice the differences between their culture and his own.
“Here it’s about Israel. It’s a war zone,” he said. “These guys thought that was crazy. They don’t notice it in their daily lives. People don’t think about terrorists bombing their area. It was cool hanging out with people who have completely different upbringing from you and live in a completely different world.”
The change in culture wasn’t the only thing Drew had to adjust to. The food was more bland than the food he was used to grabbing at a drive thru or cooking in his kitchen. According to him, the food, in most cases, wasn’t good.
“It’s strange to eat an animal that tasted like peanut butter,” he said. “Food wasn’t very good, but it’s not as far different from us as you would think. It’s like English food.”
When the work is done
After working on the farm for “several” months, Drew and Rob took a trip back to Christ Church where Drew said he was going to buy a car to use to travel around the country.
Drew said he was unsure why he took all of his belongings with him to the city, but he did. During the drive, Rob told Drew he should travel around the country instead of going back to the farm to work.
“He made a good point, and I took him up on it,” Drew said.
Drew said he made about $1600 working for Rob. He then traveled around New Zealand and worked odd jobs — like being a bouncer.
“I got to work with sheep, something fun, be in all sorts of weather. When I left [the U.S.], all I’d done was school work,” he said. “All my jobs before were ones where I didn’t have any real physical labor. This was something where I could let my mind go. There’s something good about manual labor.”
He said he is “glad that circumstances led” him to working on the farm.
“I would definitely do it again,” Drew said.
As far as the future goes, Drew, who graduated in December ’05, said he plans to travel around, “possibly to Brazil,” and apply to medical school.
“I would like, if I could get a [medical] practice here, to be here half the year and do Doctors Without Borders the other half,” he said. “I would like a job where I don’t work two to three months a year, so I can travel.”
Drew left about two weeks ago to “volunteer at a hospital” in Brazil. He said he still hopes to become a doctor and hasn’t given up on the thought of living half of his life in foreign countries.
Jonathan Drew, the self-proclaimed “nomadic traveler,” said he will always want and hope to travel just like he did in New Zealand.