In Mozambique, a potato is precious. That’s why how you share a potato, it is how you love.
When you go to the kitchen for your plate of rice and beans, you hope it will be there. Usually half, when whole – this is heaven. You’re looking it in your plate. More! You’ve been following the first movements of a big ladle in a pot, tracking on a way to your hands. And then, when you sit at the table with children, you can observe how they guard a potato. They patiently eat rice and beans, and leave the pleasure of otherness at the end.
Children are selfish. It is their beautiful right – to receive everything and to be loved in all possible ways. A law, which they learn to give up in favor of others. Because of love that is growing in them.
(And hete thought came to me. Why do we repeat to children: “you have to share”, “it’s nice to give someone a piece of what we have”, while we do not mention anything about love. And that only from this love the giving should flow. Why we do not mention this, knowing that nothing lasts, which did not begin in love.)
Children are selfish. It is their beautiful right – to receive everything and to be loved in all possible ways. A law, which they learn to give up in favor of others. Because of love that is growing in them.
Ah, that’s why children guard their potatoes. And when they share them, you know that it must be love. It’s the same with potatoes and adults.