Potatoes

Vincent Van Gogh Basket of Potatoes, 1885.

I once lived in a world in which I knew how to peel potatoes. I could also chop them. Ditto with carrots and other vegetables. In my house the potato peeler is usually in the silverware drawer. I retrieve it and peel the potatoes over the sink, or the trash can, or maybe a plastic bag. After a good rinse, I stand at the counter with cutting board and knife and, you know, chop.

In this corner of the world, vegetables are chopped outside by women squatting on small stools, usually in pairs or trios. They use a knife to peel fruits and vegetables, like my Grandmother and other women of her era whom I have watched admiringly. They hold the potato in one hand and a knife in the other and, somehow, leveraging potato and knife and hands, cut across the vegetable's poles. Then, instead of pushing the knife down as if toward the cutting board, they slice up through the vegetable toward the thumb, letting wedges fall into the bucket of water.

On Friday I traveled with a fellow volunteer to the Deaconial center a bit outside of town, to see how we might be of service. The center includes an office, a bakery, a farm, a social kitchen, a guesthouse, a home for the elderly, a school for children with disabilities, a warehouse for receiving donations...among other things I am probably forgetting. I didn't know which of these activities I might be involved in as I parked my bike at about 9:07 am. I soon learned that I was assigned, for the day, to the kitchen, where my duties included the peeling and chopping of a large quantity of potatoes.

I found myself on the patio outside the kitchen: a box of potatoes to my left, a box of potato peels to my right, and in the middle a large blue bucket filled with water and chopped potatoes. My initial attempts to peel the potato with a knife caused some distress to the women around me, who probably guessed that I was in danger of slicing open my own hand. They showed me to position my thumb well away from the knife. Peeling was only the beginning of my troubles. The potato in my hand flopped about like a fish as I tried to cut it into pieces. The others occasionally paused from their labors and watched me with concern.

I thought with equal parts embarrassment and delight, "I no longer know how to peel a potato." This was sad and frustrating and funny, but it was such a lovely day, and I got to listen to the quiet hum of the women around me. They had been peeling and chopping in this way their whole lives, and I wondered if they could know how beautiful it all was. And I thought about the potato in my hand, its color and shape and feel, and that it would give life to someone I did not know. And by the end I had progressed to chopping one potato for every eight chopped by the others, or something like that, and I got this beautiful cross-cultural-vegetable-chopping-experience.