What’s Youse Eating?

It is no secret that, besides having to provide for growth, immunity from infection, maintenance of muscle tissue, workers who do manual labour certainly need to eat additional foodstuffs for energy to do the bodily movements required of them.

This post will not uncover any surprising secret, such as, say, eating five watermelons a day will enable me to pick up and carry four bags of cement at a time, or half a dozen lengths of four by four. Instead, it is simply a short report on a personal observation around the habits of workers on a building site. Rather, the different eating habits which I have encountered.

I have chosen three different situations, one in South Africa where I used to live for many years, one in Madeira where I was fortunate enough to have holidayed, and now my new home in New Zealand. There seems to be a fairly universal roster where workers tend to start their daily tasks earlier than their white-collar counterparts, then break mid morning-ish for a “breakfast”, followed by lunch in the middle of the day.

In South Africa, basic unskilled construction industry labourers are accustomed to carrying heavy objects, digging unending ditches, and pushing heavily-laden wheel-barrows. Their meals seemed to be most monotonous, consisting of half-loaves of bread with a variety of fillers, such as canned fish or beans, washed down by large bottles of cheap sweetened bottled ginger beer.

The worker having polished off his dose, would then lie outstretched on wherever he can find a path of dry grass, face down for a snooze in the sun. On some sites, the drum-type brazier could provide a means of heating water for coffee or heating certain type of food. On reflection, this menu was not the most appetising  - though evidently cheap and easy-to-obtain at a nearby corner shop.

In Madeira where I witnessed a number of huge hotels being built for multinational groups, I observed workers acting in a much more sophisticated way.

Perhaps my experience was exceptional, but these men appeared to have brought cooked food from home with them, complete meals, mostly in purpose-made “lunch-boxes” (what I knew as “Tupperware”). A fair amount of time was spent on eating the meal, complemented by verbose conversation. Regrettably, my command of the Portuguese language was somewhat less than deficient, but I imagined that conversation would have included important matters, such as football (soccer). After meals, some men would relax in the shade somewhere nearby. I did not see anyone dashing off to a shop for fast food takeaways, although I guess this would have happened among some of the younger men.

In New Zealand, things seem almost family-like, lunchtime almost like a picnic stop on a day-long hike, clad with all sorts of paraphernalia.

I have witnessed a large variety of meals, ranging from prepared meals brought from home, and warmed in an on-site microwave oven, fairly hearty breakfasts, instant soups, takeaway pies and energy drinks, hot tea, and to-day, what especially sparked this post, a large platter of a full range of green salads – definitely not the food of a single young man!