On harvesting
Last year’s preferred method of harvesting mangoes was all about acrobatics. Starting under the lowest lying branches, jump up, grab hold, lock your ankles around a particularly sturdy off-shoot, then snake up the limb. Here, your view of the over-lying trove should be good enough to strategically plan your next move. Once a course of action is set, monkey your way up to a good branch-jostling position, so you can adequately rattle the choicest fruits onto the expectant crowds below.
Making it rain mangoes! Though if you’re on the collecting side, it’s smart to keep track of where the branch-shakers are. From a good vertical distance, even the meeker-sized mangoes can have a substantial impact with your head.
This year’s collection tactic though, is focused around a solid chunk of bamboo. Don’t bother with the already decaying bits lying about – it’s worth the extra effort to venture into the nearby bush and hack five or six choice throwing pieces of bamboo. Trust, the more dense (less rotted) your bamboo piece is, the more confident and satisfying its WOOSH will be as it flings towards it’s golden prize.
Juicy plunder
Last night, my brother told me we’d “cut [Mandinka for “harvest”] tomorrow eleven–o’clock, we are going to the mango tree,” (when not collecting mangoes, Malan and I work on his English. Getting there, eh?). 11am the next day, I approached the tree where Malan was cutting mangoes via the chunck-of-flying-bamboo method with expert flair. Breaking through the lines of cows circling the tree in search of rogue mangoes, I was distracted by a bundle of green-golden orbs at the bottom of the tree. Though I shouldn’t have been (village kids have been collecting mangoes this way since they could walk), I was surprised at how well the flying-mass-of-bamboo worked at mangoe harvesting. As if to prove the point, a whooshed piece of bamboo trickled down from the top of the tree, grazed my shoulder and startled me a few steps backwards into a nice pile of cow poop (no fun in flip-flops). “Woa-ho, sorr-ey!” shouts Malan amidst fits of giggles from the crowd of little kids who’d come to watch the spectacle. Hilarious.
Fifteen minutes later, our previously humble collection of fruit had grown to an overflowing heap of juicy plunder. As with any worthwhile endeavor, unexpected causalities did occur; one-heftily-thrown bamboo piece ricocheted off the tree with such force that as it crashed down to the ground, it used the rim of my bucket to break its fall, and thus took a bit of the bucket with it to the ground (“Ohh-ho, sorr-ey!”). Another well-aimed throw won a particularly succulent looking mango, which fell half a foot to my right, dead center into the same pile of fresh cow dung I’d earlier stepped in. As satisfying as the mangoe’s SPLAT was as it made contact with the cow pile, everyone mourned such a prize fruit going to waste.
The worth of a mango munch
There is more to mangoe season than bamboo sticks and acrobatic tree climbing. Mangoe season mercifully coincides with starving season. As of six weeks ago, our breakfast became an infrequent guest. Three weeks ago, the portion in our dinner bowls began to shrink – tonight we hit the six handfuls of rice = dinner mark. So literally “starving” no, but the new portion size did not do much to calm the beast within when it was growling two hours before dinner was even served.
Thankfully, mangoes are surprisingly filling. When normally come lunchtime my stomach is gurgling its discontent, after a morning of seven mangoes, the arrival of the lunch bowl is a surprise. “Lunch? Really! Now? Why, I’m so full on mangoes that I’m not even hungry!” Mangoes also tend to be more appetizing than rice and slimy leaf-sauce goop (shocking!).
The filling capabilities of mangoes does surprise me. I’ve been known to down fruit of impressive proportions when out of village (i.e. where fruit is available) and I can assure you that never have bananas, mandarins, grapefruits or apples had even close to the same filing effect that three mid-sized mangoes have. With some mango research for the most recent PCV Senegal newsletter, I came upon one web site that claimed mangoes to have astonishing weight-loss abilities. “Makes sense,” I’d thought. “They are indeed filling, I guess the trick is that you’d be too full to eat much else.”
Apparently mangoes make for good pillows
But then Google search “health benefits of mangoes” hit number four said that mangoes are helpful for those trying to gain weight. “Maybe that’s the filling property?… the whatever in them that’s going straight to your ass?” I couldn’t figure this claim out, and decided it was rubbish. I’m pretty in touch with the growth and shrinkage of my ass as it has been in constant flux for two years (albeit more on the influx side), and if mangoes do in fact make you gain weight, I’m confident in saying that at this point I’d have surpassed the weight limit of my bicycle.
Anyway, today’s mango consumption total is thirteen, so I have some work to do in order to ensure that my poop stays green for the next 48 hours. (NOT one of the Google-found facts – that one’s straight to you from three seasons of mangoe delight!)
Happy hot season!
