Contrasts

This morning I texted a local friend to invite her for coffee. The Mancub and I accompanied her back home, to show her a shortcut. It took us only ten minutes, through the bananas and maize plots, jumping one water-filled dich, past two communal water taps and through a little meadow with a tethered calf grazing. He husband had stayed at home to await the internet fundi who came to try to improve their connection. On the way back, on a different track, we stopped to watch two men plowing a tiny field. Two cows were roughly yoked together, pulling a plow  that was steadied by one man who walked behind. The other man was going ahead, keeping the cows moving in the right direction and battling to turn them at the end of each short furrow as they strained into the undergrowth to grab a mouthful of vegetation. I've just been re-reading the "Little House on the Prairie series" (which I borrowed for Kitty...) and it all seemed very familiar.