The Giving Bananas

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from ten years of serving in rural villages it’s this -  don’t give what you have left over, give what you have. That is the pulse of the campo. I once stayed in the house of one of our team members and his wife, Antonia.

Every day I watched her make more food then we needed. At first I thought, that’s kinda wasteful, why does she make so much?

And then every afternoon I saw her offer a few plates to tired farm workers passing by after a long day harvesting cacao in the hills.

I thought of a blind old lady I had met a few years ago in the campo. She was by far the poorest in the town and lived in a ramshackle tin hut with her son.

Although securing food was a daily challenge for them, she said whenever her son brought in a bushel of plantains she would tell him to take a quarter of the bunch and give it away. And almost every day, I witnessed different neighbors walking toward her crooked doorway with a covered plate of food.

Give what you have and don’t worry where what you need will come from.
What a beautiful way to live