Under the Mahogany

Our shadows slide forty or fifty feet stretching out to the foot of the giant mahogany tree we have been sitting under all day, chatting, arguing, clapping, laughing, and drinking cup after cup after cup of thick sweet attaya (green tea).  A government representative has come to my village and seems to actually be planning on doing something positive to help out this area, which may be the poorest in the country.   Representatives from about 9 villages have come to have come to this meeting to figure out where to put the new health clinic and the two new solar powered wells in the region.  All of this "development" may prove illusory--every election cycle reps come and promise things that will never ever happen.  I'll believe it when I drink from that well and walk into that clinic.  The meeting lasts about 6 hours.  Six hours of old grizzled men with eyes clouded by cataracts standing and shouting for their village to have all the new developments.  Six hours of dignified women wrapped in crimson head scarves making the comprimises (in 3 different languages) that allow everyone to leave happily at the end of the day.  One must stand up for one's tribe and one's village, but one must also compromise.
My patience has grown.  In  the past I could never have sat under a tree for 6 hours understanding only 40% of what was said.  But, I want to be there.  I want to stay because it increases my presence in the whole area and gives me the credibility I need to get stuff done.  As a payoff when the meeting ends, the government rep and I exchange numbers, project ideas and make vague plans to work together later.  In a more tangible development a villager from 10 miles away, and I make plans to start a cashew and mango orchard.  Once again, when I am eating a juicy mango by the river, I'll believe it.  I try to hedge all my bets here by agreeing to work with pretty much anyone that has an idea, or any one that will listen to and accept this strange white man's rants about the desert dropping south, the invisible particles in the soil that make your food grow washing away, or the fact that the next generation's farms will be half the size they are now because of overpopulation.  If 5% of projects get going it will have been a huge success.
When the 104 degree heat dissipates slightly, I hop on my bike and head over to the closest village.  My shadow has stretched out to 80 feet as the sun hangs petulantly over the edge of the land.  A dust cloud of topsoil swirls above like a brown daytime Northern lights headed off toward the ocean.  I had delivered some seeds to the women in the village a week ago and was anxious to see if they had been planted.  Success!  I arrive to a scene that is every development workers dream.  10 women and children are hand tilling the soil with the same trustworthy hoes they have been using for 2000 years.  Dust kicks up from their work, refracts the burnt red of the evening sun and encircles the women in a spiral.  We talk and laugh.  We make tenuous plans to plant massive amounts of fruit trees in a village that for the 50 years of its existence has only planted one.  My friend in the village explains how villages of only 5 households are best because the people are all "One".  They all had the same grandparents.  I contemplate trying to explain basic genetics and that it is good to toss some new genes into the pool.  But, a little girl grins, crumbles a clod of wet earth between her hands and explains that to me that she likes to garden.  I grin back, shake hands and ride back to my village watching our 100 foot shadows glide across the earth.