A Mango Piñata

So its dry/hot season here in good ole Africa. Startin to feel like July/Aug in Texas (with the AC broken), but we’re still here and, even if just for the mangos that have just started falling from the trees again, its worth it. The other day some clouds (almost stormy looking even!) blew in and the wind kicked up like crazy. Being dry season, though it was a gynormous dust disaster and you could hardly stand up outside for the dirt-hurricane going on. Still our friends and the kids in our compound went crazy running around grabbing buckets and pails, anything they could find and rushed out to the mango groves. Seems the wind knocks out a ton of the ripening mangoes and it’s a mad dash by everyone with functioning legs to run the race to grab as many as you can before they get snagged by someone else. We were eating dinner at the time, so we missed out on the actual race to the trees, but our friends who went brought back their spoils to us to share. In our group, it was madness to get the beautiful pile of treasures washed and begin the feast. We sat crouched around the small bowl of water holding the mangoes, each taking one and scarfing it down as fast as possible so that you could be quick enough to grab another and hopefully another after that before they were all gone. It was against the ‘rules’ to grab several at a time and keep them for yourself, you could have only what you could actually be eating/biting into at the time. Everything else was fair game. It was like watching a pack of wild animals all fighting for their fair share of the kill…
I had just eaten a lot and so I wasn’t quite ready to inhale a slimy (though quite tasty) bunch of fruit. Those who were feasting kept insisting that I grab one and eat up. I told them I would eat a little later only to be answered in all seriousness, that there wouldn’t be any left later. So I grabbed mine and held it in my hand as I watched the rest of the mangoes disappear quickly into the greedy and gluttonous mouths around me. It was hilarious and now me and Reaiah are just waiting for another wind storm to blow through so we can get in on the race action… It’s just not something you can do back home.

This is a picture of the winds blowing through the mango grove across from our compound.