We are walking on a thin muddy path that borders her rice patty.  This is the land she works with her husband in order to feed her children.  Before she obtained the seed capital from BEST, a locally founded NGO, she barely had enough to survive.  Her house was nothing more than pieces of sheet metal rigged together with scrap wood and rope.  Now she works this land and sleeps in a simple bed in a solid house with the profits of her own labor.

She is the tiniest slip of a woman, but her smile is wide and her steps are strong.  She is proud to show us what she has wrought with her own hands.  Her pleasure in this task radiates off her body, though she keeps her gaze to the ground and hardly says a word.

I try to wrap my mind around what it takes to keep this field, this family, alive and thriving.  I know I should be watching her hopeful eyes and capable hands for a sign, but all I can see is her feet.  How she carefully picks her way through the muddy field, how she knows where to step, how to walk, where to stand.  How the immense strength of her spirit carries her, even as the frailty of her body dares her destiny and expands her hope.