Better than Brunch

Last Saturday, I woke up wanting to go out to brunch. In my mind, the perfect Saturday would involve sleeping a little later, wearing cute brunchy clothes, and meeting up with some friends for fruit covered french-toast, bottomless cups of coffee, and lingering conversation.

Christine said we could bike down to the market, see if there was any pita available, buy some eggs, add some powdered milk, and make our own french toast. I said, “Not. The. Same. Thing.”

Instead, midmorning found Christine, Acacia and I heading out to our church’s sorghum garden. We attached hoes to the back of our bikes, and followed the loose directions I had gotten from friends at church.

The directions seemed to lead us straight into someone’s yard, but then they graciously sent a couple of their kids and a dog to escort us to the actual garden. Snaking our way down a narrow path, through shoulder high grass and bush, eventually we made it to the garden.

And actually, it wasn’t even a garden yet, as most of the land hadn’t even gone through initial clearing. We all took a turn tearing into the ground with our jombes, much to the amusement of those already working the ground.

Then, we joined the ladies picking greens and mixing linia for our lunch. People found giant leaves for us to sit on, and we picked the greens and talked and laughed, and dug a little more in the dirt. People from church kept showing up, until there were at least 50 of us working together, getting the garden ready for growth.

And then, we rested together, enjoying a lunch of linia and codura with dried fish, followed by sweet, minty tea.

Usually, codura with dried fish is not my favorite food because the greens are kind of slimy and the fish is kind of fishy, and its definitely not strawberry french toast from Sabrina’s. But for some reason, on this Saturday, the codura and linia seemed perfect. So too, the stretching conversation with its funny mix of Moru, Arabic, English, and pantomime. And the hot, minty tea in the shady forest next to the just cleared garden plot was a perfect ending to our time at the garden.

A good reminder to me that a morning in the garden can be better than brunch, that sometimes what you get proves to be better than what you want.

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