Threads of Joy
September 5, 2017 by
Paola may live alone, but she is anything but. Her home is where her family congregates. Hers is where the grandkids are — all of them, all of the time, she jokes. And even translated from Mam to Spanish to English, I hear the familiar sarcasm-with-love of a grandmother. I can also tell that she wouldn’t have it any other way. She wants them close. They are family.
Since becoming involved in the Nutrition project, she has recruited grandsons Jeffrey and Lester to help with her garden – a newly fenced space in which she grows vegetables. She peers over her square tinted lenses and gives the boys a ‘look’ as they giggle and defiantly pull a premature carrot no longer than 2 inches. Good help can be hard to find. But she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Previously an elusive food group, vegetable seeds received from the Nutrition project to establish her garden have changed the way Paola feeds her family. Meat, expensive and precious, no longer forms the basis of meals. Soups, she discovers, are both nutritious and delicious using vegetables. Meat not required.
She is now proudly one of those grandmothers. One that makes you eat every potato and pea on your plate – or in this case, every carrot and onion in your soup!
Threads of Joy.
Stitched together by you!
Central America and the Caribbean Climate Change Food security Food Sovereignty Guatemala In The Field Indigenous Peoples Nicole Farn nutrition Women