Kitchen

Shafts of light filter between the wooden planks that make up the walls of this square room.  We come in to warm our tortillas on her fire, to gather some heat away from the rain outside.  We crouch on low stools near the blaze on her earthen floor.  While we sit in silence, the cat and chickens and children, the pat, pat, pat as she hand makes tortillas from her corn masa (dough) seem a part of the quiet.  She turns the tortillas on her iron cooking slab over the fire, adds an egg to small pan on the slab that serves as her stove, pours the coffee from a scalding earthen pot  - all with her bare hand, accustomed to the heat.  Through the slats in the walls the children’s eyes stare inquisitively – as soon as I look they run away.  They tell us the children are afraid because they think we have come to vaccinate them.  She serves the beans and eggs and tortillas, throws some maize to the chickens, and feeds the baby on her breast in the corner.

The next day, another kitchen, another fire.  The family this time, gathered around.  We ask for a photo, the parents are glad and you can see their pride as they gather their children around them.  They show us pacaya, and how to eat it.  They laugh with us at our ignorance.

We tread lightly, entering into the intimate place – kitchen, hearth.  Invited, but still strangers.  We leave hushed, hardly believing where we have been.  Only because we come with the community organizer from Agros.

Later we talk with the women in the schoolhouse.  We talk of their challenges, their committee, take a tour of their projects.  But it was the kitchen where we could share with them.  We are hopeful to spend time in one or two communities as our project goes forward, to share more meals in the kitchen.