Love your neighbor..........

Well, today our neighbor cut down our papaya tree!

I'm still a little puzzled by it...we have 2 papaya trees (now 1-1/2) in our back yard, by our side wall. If you don't know how papayas grow, the trees basically grow straight up, they have a tuft of leaves at the top and then the fruit grows underneath the leaves. The taller the tree, the higher the fruit.

We are not huge papaya fans, and one of the trees had gotten too high to reach from the top of our rickety ladder, so fruit from that tree was probably frequently falling to the other side of the wall. I guess the neighbors got fed up with it. If they had come over and said something, we would have gladly taken care of it, no problem. Instead...this morning my helper told me while I was homeschooling my son..."Ibu, the neighbors cut down your papaya tree..." I laughed unbelievingly, and went on...when I went to look at it, it was true - they had cut the tree off right at the level of the wall. Below the tree on the ground was the top portion of the tree, which had previously had quite a bit of unripe fruit - they had apparently cut that portion first and cut off all the fruit. They had taken and kept the fruit that was ripe enough to be edible, then threw the rest in the corner of our yard, with the lower portion of the trunk, which I'm guessing was cut separately. They have not yet said a word to us.

The friends that we've talked to said that our neighbors' actions are not culturally appropriate, and they were surprised too - that made us feel better...at least we hadn't totally missed something! Not sure what our reaction should be...but we are feeling more motivated to continue to understand this culture we are living in!