The best thing that happened today is that I went to the market to buy tomatoes. I had already purchased 10 bread rolls, a half liter of milk, and a couple bunches of bananas. The rolls filled a small plastic bag. Everything else fit into my open, upturned palms.
I bought about a dozen tomatoes. The vendor was out of plastic bags and so helped me stack the tomatoes on top and between the bananas and milk, making them sit the same way that they would sit if you were carrying a pile of baseballs on top of a stack of bats.
The path home is made of dirt and winds between straw and mud homes and bamboo fences and mango trees. It is difficult to walk if you are carrying 10 rolls of bread, a liter of milk, and all those bananas all layered in tomatoes. It is difficult to walk and keep your balance. So, I walked slowly, sometimes tip-toeing. I even stopped when a couple of puppies crossed my path. Leão, my dog, who had accompanied me to the market, began to bark. She took some steps towards them. (She's prone to go after any dog that comes near me.) A small girl ran out of a mud house. I thought she was coming to scoop up the puppies and take them to safety or maybe swat at Leão. Instead, she looked up at me. “Senhor professor, here's a plastic bag.”
