So we are taken to another village about 5 km down the road.  We stop at the home of tremendously thin family.  The tremendously thin father welcomes us warmly in.  The walls of the home are more non-existent than anything else - more like a loosely constructed fence really.  He takes us back to show us his garden.  He is a proud man.  He has a garden full of healthy green corn.  Total area of his arable land is little more than the size of the average sub-urban backyard garden of Western middle class families - well, maybe a bit more than that; about 100 square meters.  From this he feeds his family of at least 5 (it remained unclear whether some persons at the site were family or just curious onlookers wondering what a couple of strangers were doing in the garden).

I think it is clear which man is the tremendously thin father.  The other man (ok - on the left) is Father Jose.  The Timorese man is proud because he needs no fertilizer to produce the wonderful stand of corn behind him.  He has no money so would he need fertilizer he may well be thinner than this.  The land is wonderfully fertile.  I am left dumbfounded.  Why does he not expand the garden?  A close look at the soil provides one reason.  It is a very heavy clay soil.  Any effort to expand the garden would easily consume more calories than the man's corn garden provides his family.  This is no small consideration in a severely malnourished community.  There simply is not enough caloric intake to do the work.

'Where are the buffalos or other draft animals?' I wonder to myself.

Then Father Jose takes us across the street - literally.