Hard, But Worth Every Minute
By Tom Godfrey

I sat in a bus heading 5 hours north of Athens, Greece, wondering what I had gotten myself into; and this wouldn’t be the last time I wondered that, either.

Sick of excitement limited to only fantasy, I had weeks before given my notice at work and signed up for a work camp.  While it may sound like I was joining a fascist summer group, work camps are popular everywhere but the U.S.  The idea is simple: in exchange for labor (digging, building, teaching, etc.), a town or village will supply you with lodging, food and cultural excursions.  Sure, airfare is expensive, but how else can you spend three weeks abroad for $800?

My world changed when I finally got off the bus.  Gone were the tropical trees, the tourists and the Travel Channel sites.  We were greeted by the wild Tzoumerka Mountains.

There were seven of us: Sun-Young and Dawoon from South Korea, Paula from England, Irma and Jardiel from Mexico, and Axilleas from Greece…and me.  We stood on the outskirts of a village called Kattaraktis, watching a very confused old woman in black carry a bundle of wood as she walked down the road.  We were an odd sight.

Soon, we were picked up and driven to a village called Kedros, our home for the next three weeks.

We were greeted by the camp leaders ~ Ellini from Greece and Josef from France ~ and shown to our hostel, which consisted of a large room with a few single beds and two rows of beds pushed so close together we would soon be sleeping with total strangers.  The bathroom below was cavernous and always freezing.
Kedros, Ellini told us, was trying to increase tourism beyond that of the occasional climbers and skiers.  We would be planting trees and building fences.

To say life was easy would be a lie.  The work was hard.  Each day we dug into the clay to plant the trees.  It seemed that it would never end.  Each post put into the ground had a rock beneath it that needed to be shattered.  Labor is not the real point of a work camp, though.

We laughed, fought and drank in our hostel.  We became a very odd family.  We learned bits of new languages (OK, mostly obscenities).  We shared our stories: Jardiel was spending an entire year doing work camps.  Josef had been wandering Europe for so long that he doubted if he officially existed anywhere.  Sun-Young hated Kevin Federline.  We ate and we danced.  We were there the first time Jardiel ever saw snow and we suffered his displeasure.

We saw sites that most will never see.  We visited the ancient city Ioannina and saw the influence of Turkish invaders.  We climbed a mountain to a long abandoned village and had lunch in a monastery cut into cliff.

In the end, we tried to fight the goodbye.  A few of us lingered in the airport terminal, drinking wine from paper cups and toasting to life.  We planned reunions that we knew would never happen and I flew home elated by the experience of my first work camp and ready for another.

For more work camp info, go to www.cadip.org.

To see additional photos from Tom’s work camp, go to
hungryphotographer.mosaicglobe.com.

Photos by Tom Godfrey