The ordinariness of it is astounding to someone living in other parts of the world where mangoes are purchased from a store for the same price you could make a fabulous (avocado free) taco dinner. The mangoes just keep dropping from the trees, into my tadpole bucket, onto our picnic tables, rolling around on the ground, squishing under our feet. One could get used to it, but all to soon it will be over. Therefore, the harvesting and preservation has begun! It looks like this:
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| Collect mangoes with Mariama. |
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| Collect mangoes in the tree and throw them down to Mariama |
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| Peel and cut the mangoes. |
Then we put them in a dehydrator that someone is lending us. It is electric, so as long as the electricity stays on, we have scrumptious dried Mango (fruit leather, mango pieces) in about 24-30 hours.
Local berries and kale have also found their way into the dehydrator...in fact, I can't eat a plant or fruit without thinking how it might taste dried. Avocado almost took away my appetite tonight (dried avacado?), but I got over the thought and we ate them (all seven of them) for dinner.
Despite the ordinariness of it all, it's also quiet extraordinary because mango season comes on and goes fast. We're not the only ones excited by our mangoes. We also have young friends who pick regularly to go and sell them. Sometimes I collect 10 mangoes as tax, but usually they leave with a bag on their head and in their hand with the juicy sweetness they will sell: four for 6 cents.
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