Nil

Nil first drew my eye three years ago when I did some volunteer work, gathering food for a homeless meals program. He has been working in the produce section of our consumer cooperative for 10 years since he arrived in the US with his wife, from Nepal, unable to speak English although he could read and write. She had a scholarship to study at the University of Washington.

Nil had been in parliament in Nepal, with all the due respect, so this has been a journey. He is now 45 and is happy, has a huge garden at home, wants to teach about gardening as he has made himself an experimenter and manages to have vegetables if his own year around. Their daughter is on a scholarship to study science this summer at a college int he midwest, she will be a junior in high school next year.

A happy immigrant story. And I should add he runs marathons - fast. He was unable to go to Boston this year because of a foot injury, we both agreed that was a gift!
We talked for at least 45 minutes while he worked stacking kales and cleaning up leeks. Such relaxing work, a nice kind of repetitive!