Jungle shopping

This morning Liza and her daughters took me jungle shopping. We went out walking in the jungle looking for edible plants to collect. The older girl is 7 and has been many times before. She’s already very good at identifying particular plants and spotting interesting insects. The youngest one is just 2 and it was her first jungle shopping trip – Liza’s cousin usually takes care of her while Liza is busy but she couldn’t come today so little F had to come with us. She was very good but needed to be carried for half the way, not easy for Liza since the terrain was steep, rough and slippy.

It was very interesting to walk through the jungle with someone as knowledgeable as Liza about the plants. She pointed out lots of different plants some with uses in cooking, others as medicine. We collected some plants, including edible ferns and tapioca leaves, for using in tonight’s dinner. We didn’t find any young bamboo shoots from the right type of bamboo. And we didn’t find any edible mushrooms, only non-edible ones.


Just after lunch it started raining. Torrential, monsoon, jungle rain. And it didn’t stop all afternoon. (It’s the drier season right now.) Instead of going for another jungle walk, I sat on the veranda, listening to the rain and reading a book.