When I first heard about Workaway it sounded too good to be true, and maybe in some methods it was: a web site on which travellers may alternate their expertise without cost lodging appeared like one thing that solely occurred in goals. Maybe that’s what appealed to me about it – the triumph of group over money.
After I moved to a ramshackle Somerset cottage with out sufficient expertise to do the renovations myself, or cash to pay tradespeople, I turned to Workaway for assist. For the previous yr it has stored me in labourers and buddies.
My Workaway company, sleeping in my caravan and spare room, got here from throughout the globe and the social spectrum, ranging in ages from their teenagers to their 50s. A healer from Kenya painted my lavatory pink; an engineer from Argentina put up my thrifted chandeliers; a graffiti artist from Seattle mounted my caravan and an Irish teenager tried to place up footage on my bed room wall and as an alternative hammered the plaster clear off.
Many of the Workaways I met had been travellers however some had been British folks opting out of the system or younger digital nomads on the lookout for alternative routes of residing. One author from Boston, Lincolnshire, helped plaster my ceiling in between writing video video games in my caravan; a builder from Manchester helped me set up a backyard gate whereas buying and selling cryptocurrency on the facet.
Typically company had been looking for one thing, taking hole years or having mid-life crises, and I felt privileged to be a cease on their journeys. I had company who advised me about how they’d come out of the care system, and others travelling between non secular communities and retreats. I sat up late with a youngster who spent infinite evenings studying travelogues and poems to me, whereas artists opened their sketchbooks to indicate me their work, a few of which is now on my partitions. Some left presents, just like the Italian guerrilla knitter who crocheted me a hat.
As a journey author whose capability to journey was drastically curtailed throughout the pandemic, I relished the best way Workaway introduced the world again into my life. I used to be spoiled as company from Italy, Kenya and Brazil cooked meals for me, and I discovered to cook dinner extra vegan dishes than I knew existed. We threw dinner events themed on company’ residence international locations: on French evening, we baked vegan cheese, and on Mexican evening we argued about whether or not placing up a piñata was cultural appropriation or not.
And so it was with heavy disappointment that I opened a latest electronic mail from Workaway informing me it was “pausing a big portion” of UK host listings till additional discover. “As rules round journey and dealing visas have develop into a lot stricter publish Brexit,” the e-mail went on, “particularly for Europeans, it’s develop into unfeasible to proceed itemizing exchanges within the UK.”
A Workaway spokesperson added: “With modifications in rules for EU guests due to Brexit, it’s now not possible to us to proceed itemizing exchanges within the UK, because it takes up too lots of our assets. This has been an inner choice.
“It has not been a choice we’ve taken evenly and we really feel extraordinarily saddened that we’ve to take this motion.”
I had been conscious of company having points with visas. One Brazilian man who had travelled to Britain to stick with me was turned away on the airport and placed on the following flight residence, and I used to be subjected to a phone grilling by an immigration officer about one other visitor.
Since Brexit, somebody from the EU can solely volunteer within the UK for as much as 30 days, after which solely with a registered charity. To do voluntary work for greater than 30 days requires a charity employee visa, which can be required by non EU nationals coming for any size of time. This successfully signifies that until I register as charity I can now not take company as a Workway host.
Workaway additionally payments itself as a cultural alternate and I loved that side of it, taking my company on days out to Stonehenge, Tub and the native bingo evening.
At occasions, managing eclectic folks’s expectations was tough, as was sharing my residence with random strangers whose residing preparations, cultures and politics typically clashed with my very own. I didn’t at all times take pleasure in coming all the way down to the kitchen for breakfast and strolling straight right into a debate about environmentalism. I argued with Workaways about veganism as I ate steak in my very own kitchen; managed rows between company in regards to the pronouns they’d referred to as one another; and debated nationalism with one “world citizen”.
I struggled to oversee folks doing work on my home that I didn’t know how one can do myself. Younger and unskilled Workaways’ noble makes an attempt at DIY typically precipitated extra points than they mounted – like the one who tried to place up some curtain poles and drilled into the electrics.
Nonetheless, Workaway reworked my life, and my cottage. It invigorated nation residing, stopping it from ever being too quiet or uninteresting and as an alternative crammed it with experiences, pleasure, drama and enjoyable from an ever-changing carousel of company.
The tip of Workaway feels such a loss for me, different hosts, and all travellers who used the positioning to expertise British life in a really “actual” means. Like so many issues about Brexit, it appears to have closed our nation down and closed us off to new experiences.