Three years ago a drought nearly wiped out the old seeds of Tamba, a village in the dry hills. The grandmothers saved a few handfuls in clay jars. Now Amina, a botanist of thirty-eight, carried a small box of them to a vault inside a frozen mountain on an island in the Arctic, where seeds from all over the world are kept safe in case of disaster.
The box held red beans, which her grandmother had called "the patient ones" because they could wait years for rain, millet and a small hot pepper that grows nowhere else. The journey took four days: a small boat across the river, nine hours on a bus, two planes and a van through the snow. She had never seen snow before.
At the entrance a guard in a thick coat wrote in a book, "Tamba: beans, millet, pepper," and took the box in both hands. Amina walked down the long, quiet tunnel. The shelves were kept at eighteen degrees below zero, and they were full of silver boxes with seeds from many countries. She felt small and hopeful.
On the plane home she thought of the grandmothers and their clay jars. If something ever happens, she thought, the beans of Tamba will grow again.
