Ina Vannay sits outside in the grey early morning light, taking damp hand-fulls of greenery and painstakingly scraping the seeds off with half a coconut shell. By the time she has done five bundles she can hear her husband and the children getting up. So she scrambles to her feet to fetch some of the pendulous sayotes from the plant growing next to the house. The health worker said that the sayotes give no nourishment. But there is no time for her to finish the long preparation of the palay before breakfast.
Breakfast is a silent meal, with everyone eating quickly.
Sabado, her youngest, goes with her. Sometimes she snatches a few minutes to have a bath herself and sit with him in the sunshine watching the turquoise dragonflies. But today she is too busy for that, so he simply splashes around nearby while she works. She watches him out of the corner of her eye - a neighbour s child recently drowned while his mother was busy scrubbing clothes just a few steps away. She has a plan to start weaving cloth for sale to pay for Sabado s education.