Pawpaw and Brown Lentil Curry

In our kitchen in Kenya, I would often join our cook, Nelson, to chat and keep a watchful eye on the welfare of his toes – or lack of them, I should say – as he had a tendency to drop the sharp chopping knives, and his well-worn flip-flops offered no protection so each foot was missing two-and-a-half toes. He showed me how to scoop out the large seeds of the pawpaw (or papaya), which I always thought looked uncannily like bloated ticks, and to lay them out in the sun to dry