A Helping Hand

A helping hand or in this case a helping shoulder. We were on a walk one day and saw this woman walking in the other direction carrying these large leaves. A while later we were headed back and came upon her again at least a kilometer from her village.
She was an older woman and she came up to about my shoulder. She kept swinging the stick holding the leaves from one shoulder to the other so we know it was getting heavy for her. We asked with hand gestures if Philip could carry it for her. She broke out into a big grin and handed it over. Well it turns out to weigh between 35 and 50 pounds! At one point both bundles of leaves fell off the stick into the red dust that was the path. Oh no I thought her supper had landed in the dirt but she laughed and laughed and fixed it back to the stick. Then she gave it back to Philip, she wasn't going to miss her chance of help!
Along the way we passed people who nodded and smiled and we heard her use the word 'falang ' which is what Loatians call foreigners. We don't know if she was saying crazy foreigners or aren't they nice! She led us up to a little bamboo house with a small barn and lots of different cool bamboo woven fences and told us with gestures that it was food for her cow!