Can you give me?

Written 16 Feb, posted 17th.
Four times today I have been asked. The first request is for the laminated sheets, courtesy of Send-a-Cow and my friend Ann R, showing the ingredients and techniques for making liquid plant food from different kinds of leaves or by steeping animal droppings. This time last year I had one A3 and two A4 copies of the set of six sheets. Several of the smaller ones have disappeared – I hope whoever couldn't bear to give them back is benefiting. I do give an electronic copy of the set on a flash drive to somebody with access to a computer. I have also compiled a set of around ten photos of the recommended plants, so I copy that file onto the flash drive as well.

The recipients are the group of women whose story I heard in October from the pastor's wife. Our workshop time today began with a tour of four gardens.
Only one has sacks planted but that is of no consequence – all are productive.

The women are positive, relaxed, appreciative. They confirm the theory that having veg in an intensive space close to the house makes tending and using easier. When the conversation turns to using the unfamiliar vegetables whose seeds I gave out last year (kale, basil, chard), one asks if we could cook together. It's too late for that now but I say I'll try to come back next year though I can't promise.

I have noticed before how much pleasure my students get from looking at illustrated seed catalogues, which I use for plant identification when neither the English name nor the French from the local seed packets is understood. This year, though not previously, I have been asked three times already to donate a catalogue, including both this morning and this afternoon. Not yet, I say, but I'll try to get one to you when I'm leaving. On my last visit I left some teaching materials behind by mistake and it was the catalogue I missed most; this time I find I've packed five.

The third request comes from the group of teachers at Kamembe Friends School. My visit has provided variety both for the twenty teachers and for Gayle and Matt, the couple from a Friends Church in Oregon who are here for two years as part of a small team teaching English to the teachers in the four Friends secondary schools.

Yesterday I used a page on healthy eating, prepared by my friend Anne W with a paragraph specifically about Rwanda from Rachel Bugenimana. The highlight for me, as for Gayle and Matt, was a question about an item of vocabulary none of us had considered tricky: 'What is a snack?' Today, after an hour on complementary proteins, we divide into three groups to study a colourful chart about nutrition, produced in England for use in health shops, spotted by my daughter Judith and appropriate because it excludes animal food sources. I have explained earlier that some people in rich countries choose to be vegetarian or vegan and that it is possible to be well nourished without animal protein. One of the teachers in my group begs me to give him that chart so he can use it to teach the people in his home village: he has already made notes about the importance of vitamin A for preventing sight problems. I say I can't give away my teaching material, which I will need for other groups, but I'll get a colour photocopy made in Kigali and send it to him via Gayle and Matt. The minute the class finishes he is checking with Gayle that she'll chase me up if necessary and not fail him.

And the fourth? Not from a student but a child of less than two, encountered on our morning tour of gardens. He drags his attendant adult to my side and speaks earnestly. I ask for a translation, thinking he's probably greeting me, as children often do. Oh no. He already knows the thing to do with white people is ask them for something. 'Give me a sweet potato.'