Work re-creates unemployed, discouraged human beings. God created them in his image. A job restores it. Busy with creative work, they become more fully themselves. But SASAC has not only re-created unemployed individuals. It has re-created villages. Idleness is the devil's workshop. In that workshop he does not build up. He breaks down. Drink, the bitterness that goes with being unwanted was yielding bitter grapes: quarrels, and discord. Working together on liberating, self-help projects like preparing straw for our mushrooms has been the 'balm of Gilead' soothing painful sores, curing feuds and making happy friends out of unhappy enemies.

When making mushroom cylinders, squeezing excess water out of straw is strenuous. I try to follow the axiom: don't ask others to do it, if you haven't done it yourself. So one day I tried squeezing myself. (I mean I tried squeezing straw myself!!) After squeezing two handfuls, my old fingers had the squeeze power of spaghetti. But my village people never complain -- that's part of their problem. For years they have had no control over their lives. So they don't think they can solve problems, they must endure them. The sad part is this 'contented fatalism' is  mistaken for holiness. For them the world is given to be accepted as is. I believe the world is a God-given garden He wants us, His children, to cultivate.

It was raining when I took this picture. 'Where have all the raindrops gone?' Do people in temperate countries think how the weather affects production in tropical countries? In May down in the plains, it's painful to watch farmers ploughing their fields. The sun blinding, the heat ferocious, enervating. How can they possibly work in it? In our Himalayas we live in a world of wet for 4 months. Downpours, clouds, mists, overcast skies that would depress a lark into sullen silence. "Where have all the blue skies gone?" In the monsoon we drag ourselves along like a funeral procession. In sunny October we bounce along doing the Tamang dance - or the Highland Fling if your mother came from Scotland, as mine did!

Talk about marriages made in heaven! Compost and mushrooms seem as compatible as fibber Magee and Molly. (Remembered of course only by contemporaries of Egyptian mummies!) We think compost piles reproduce the thick jungle atmosphere our mushrooms used to thrive on before we destroyed their habitat. What matters of course is that by giving mother nature a little helping hand, as loving children should, our compost makes plants live a healthy, prolific and prosperous (for us!) life. Improved plant life means improved human life. And mushrooms give not only increased income. They give our Hindu vegetarians all the proteins they need even without a 3-inch steak underneath!