When the group emerged from the nursery, the students who had finished their first morning class were leaving their classrooms. Some of the quicker children were already playing on the field. More than a dozen women in long dresses headed toward a separate courtyard behind the classrooms, where the school kitchen was located. They had to begin preparing lunch and dinner after the first class ended, so the younger students—and the men waiting at the school gates, patting their bellies and bawling for food—could eat at noon.
The women's long dresses were brightly colored, their patchwork fabric draped over dark skin, making them look like venomous snakes from the rainforest. Yet the dangling decorations at their hems and broad sleeves also restricted their movements.
Before getting to work, they took out long strips of cloth wrapped around their waists, lifted their ankle-length skirts, and tied them firmly around their thighs. Then they helped one another, winding each other's broad sleeves from the front around the backs of their necks and tying them in loose knots... After these preparations, the women began working amid laughter.
"Let's find somewhere to sit for a while," Boheng said.
"What are we doing later?" Hesta asked.
"Uh, eating?"
"Let's go back to eat," Victoria said. Perhaps realizing her tone had been too stiff, she suddenly laughed. "We can rest while we're at it."
"Then you go on back," Vilsin said. "I'd like to try the food at this school."
They parted ways on the spot. Hesta, Victoria, and Zoe headed back together. Though they barely spoke along the way, their reasons for returning were the same. They neither wanted to burden these women studying at the school, like the old men waiting outside for food, nor did they want to step up and help—because that