She saw them first with bowls of pale, squirming worms in their hands.

Two young mothers walked slowly through the dilungu, toddlers trailing behind them. Cream-coloured sand clung to the fingers that held their dinner tightly. Their colourful kikwembes swished in the grass and paused when one of the toddlers stumbled. Without hesitation, one handed her bowl to the other, lifted the crying boy and, in one fluid movement, tied him to her back. It took only seconds.

It felt like watching a well-rehearsed dance.

She was on her first cross-border field trip as a social survey consultant. Fourteen days away from home. The days before departure had been filled with lists — school pickups, uniforms, snack boxes, calendar reminders. She had cooked in advance and labelled meals in the freezer. Though her partner was a capable cook, she worried he might revert too quickly to takeaway. Her children were fussy eaters.

The mothers with the worms were young. Teenage marriages and pregnancies were common here. They crossed the road from the dilungu toward a cluster of mud homes. More children joined them as they walked. No adults in sight.

They stopped at a hut where an older woman stood over a wood stove. Steam rose steadily from a pot. Wrinkled hands paused mid-motion to accept the bowls. Cassava lay sliced and drying in the sun. The toddler now slept peacefully on his mother’s back.

Laughter drifted between them. The children jostled. The worms would be shared.

She thought about the survey waiting on her tablet.

There was a section on ecosystem services.
A section on social support systems.
A section on household composition.

She already knew the average family size here was 5.8 children.

But how would she record the choreography she had just witnessed? The matter-of-fact way each mother absorbed another’s child. The steam rising from a communal pot. The quiet certainty that no one eats alone if there is enough to share.

The survey results would inform development priorities.

She wondered, briefly, what priorities would be recommended if the stack of labelled meals in her freezer were part of a social data set.

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