He rambles.  Be warned.

It’s like they’ve joined forces against us; the sun searching out any uncovered skin so it might leave it’s searing mark; the road attempting to untie ligaments through bone jarring and rattling whatever it can; the dust by slowly filling lungs, throats and eyes; that tree root out the back of Pedarro stopping our bike well before we’d planned, throwing me forward into the broad back of Gamma, agricultural expert and TLM village facilitator.  We laugh, two oversize blokes on an undersized bike.  The road turns into a goat track, we press on til the bike does a Balaam’s donkey and refuses to go any further.  We park up and walk.  It’s so dry this time of year; so dry.  The eroded mountains, bald, with shoulders sagging, seem to be giving up on life. Their tree friends were either kidnapped and murdered some time ago, the grass died, and so the mountains stand alone, tired, worn out from the periodic beatings dished out by sun, rain, wind, wind, rain, sun.  Will it ever stop?  Why keep going?  I salute their courage as we bumble past and vicariously melt with them to the valley below.

Dry leaves crunch underfoot, sweat drips, dust clings.  We clamber over rocky outcrops, push through a patch of pohon hitman, blackwood, to a small clearing on the side of a hill.  In stark contrast to the tired, thirsty landscape, we finally find our prey: a rehabilitated well: concrete, sullen and grey; ugly til you peer over the bunding to its gift below:  Water.  Clean.  Cool.  Fresh. Beautiful.  We haul a bucket up and drink deeply.  There’s no houses in sight, but an older woman appears, two empty buckets over her shoulder, one more in each hand.  We ask how far she’s come barefoot across the prickly, rocky landscape.  Tidak jauh, not far.  A 20 minute walk, just over that significant hill in the distance.  She dismisses the hill, flattens it with a sweep of her dry, bony hand and fills her buckets while we chat.  There’s 15 families that collect water from this well; some, usually women and children, walking over a kilometre to get here; before the rehab, they’d walk even further when this one dried up.

As we slowly walk back to the bike I realise just how far the community had to carry, push, pull and cajole the 20 odd well liners required for the rehabilitation.  I stop often.  My bag feels heavy.  I scull warm water, swipe sweat and complain about the heat.  Then I remember the 20 minute, 40 kg walk of silent determination that our light-framed friend at the well will make three more times today.  She is nothing short of incredible.

We visit five other wells.  At number three, Ronnie, bare chested, bare foot, barely 12, is sent scampering up a nearby palm so that we might drink the refreshing coconut water and eat the soft white flesh. Six coconuts plummet to their death before he expertly slides back to earth.  He doesn’t partake; he’s happy to see his visitors restored, the maturity and selflessness of an old man in the body of a boy.  At well number five: Martinus, not yet 10, deftly makes his way up a lontar palm, tools and baskets swinging from his narrow waist.  He expertly empties the liquid collected at the top of the palm, washes the palm-leaf basket, sets it back in its place.  He repeats the operation four times at baskets stationed throughout the treetop, then balances his way across a narrow timber a good four metres up, tools and baskets dancing behind, to another lontar.  He empties the tree of its milky contents, climbs down, and the liquid is poured into mugs for our refreshment.  It’s a little like lemonade; slightly tangy, slightly sweet, lightly carbonated.  Together with his dad, Martinus will climb 20 trees twice per day in the dry season, spend a few hours each day boiling it down to a syrup, earning the family $4.  We sit on the grave of two of his siblings who didn’t make it to five while we chat and are refreshed.  Someone’s playing music on their phone; I recognise the tune; it’s an old hymn: up from the grave he arose, with a mighty triumph o’er his foes.  I wonder how this all fits together and how old man Martinus still manages to press on, smile so easy, be so generous.  I’d have given up long ago.

On the way home I’m reflecting on how exhausted I am, and how Ricky manages to do this job day in day out, earning as much per month as I’ve spent on dinner at restaurants that make duck confit with beetroot jus.  Then we stop past a friend of Ricky’s, sit under his massive tree and try to put a dent in the sackful of mangos he’s placed before us.  One eye glazed white by a cataract, having buried his wife last year, with 7 children that want loving, feeding and schooling, I wonder why he’s giving a sackful of his crop away.  We escape into the diminishing light, darkness having extinguished the sun’s branding iron for a few humid hours, and I’m not at all convinced that I live anything close to a generous life.  A few folks who do?  A hundred-and-twelve year old Ronnie, Old man Martinus, his pint-sized sidekick and the wonderful Mr. Mango.  I can’t help but love them.