Eggplants

One of my best experiences was at an extremely isolate, tiny village where we were to look at a large check dam. The check dams were built to help recharge the fresh groundwater pockets, by trapping rainwater in an area to hold it long enough to permeate deep below the surface and refill the natural underground “tank”.

As with each village we stopped at, we were soon surrounded by the village boys and men, with women watching us standing at a distance. This village turned out to be particularly friendly and one of the men invited us down to the housing area for a demonstration of the cow patty fires (I’ll explain in a different post) and to show us some of their crops. We were lead to a field of plentiful purple eggplants—as you can see one of the boys showing us proudly.

This village was not only friendly, but also more advanced and well-kept than many of the others we visited. I think this is in large part due to the check dam which supplied them with appropriate water, resulting in betting living conditions overall and those beautiful fields of eggplants. Additionally, two of the teenage boys had cell phones and started asking for and taking pictures of us. This resulted in hundreds of photo exchanges between our two groups, us taking picture of the villagers alone and with them, and vice-versa. I had learned earlier that day that often the people in these friendlier villages loved for you to show them pictures of them on your camera, right after you’d snap one, and this village was certainly no different.

When it was time to leave, there was quite a large crowd around us, maybe 40 villagers (again, mostly boys and men, but in this group a few little girls too) and I turned to snap one last shot of a group of boys who were following me as I walked back to the vehicle. Of course I showed them the picture, and we were all smiling at each other and I was starting to say good-bye, when the boy who had picked the eggplant in the field handed me the vegetable, giggling nervously. Shocked and amazed by this sweet gesture, I immediately turned bright red feeling incredibly guilty about taking something that could have provided a nutritious meal for one of these kids. But I also remembered how devastating I had felt the previous day when a little girl refused to take the banana I had saved from my lunch to offer her—so of course I took the eggplant. I said thank you to the boy, and the men standing with him, and many of them immediately said “Tank you! Tank you! Tank you!” back to me and too each other laughing and beaming with pride at their new American words. I sat back down in the car feeling overwhelmed by the experience, and just wishing I was able to use that beautiful eggplant to cook something delicious.