All about mangoes

One sweet delicacy that I missed since coming here is the dried mangoes from Cebu. These are strips of mangoes freeze dried or chemically dried making it not so dry and chunky, like bubble gum (we call it not so dried mangoes) and coated with sugar. It’s a truly healthy snack just like chocolates coz they both came from fruits. Anyways, these mangoes are made from Philippine mango which is the real mango. It taste like the real thing, unlike other mangoes which tastes like…. I don’t know. I had a fill of these special fruits when I was young. We had a big mango tree in our backyard teeming with fruits twice a year. It gives shade from its big trunk and leaves, branches giving rooms for beautiful birds, plus all the fruits that I can pick and eat. Then my mom sent somebody to cut it. The fruits keeps falling on the roof, leaves constantly blocking the drain pipes, all the bird shit and all the caterpillars hanging around like Christmas balls. So we had mango firewood for a month. Here in Ndanda we also have mangoes trees as well. What a surprise! There is a mango tree when I look out of my room window, there is a mango tree when I look out the laboratory window but theres no mango tree in my bathroom window coz I don’t have a window there. Basically they are everywhere. During mango season these quite trees becomes great battlefield arena. Pregnant women, old ladies with baskets, people in crutches and casts stays and awaits under these trees for the….. FALLING. They don’t believe in using a pole (that’s too tiresome), climbing the tree (too dangerous), so they wait for the fruits to fall. Patiently on a lookout from early morning till late noon, constantly monitoring for the slight change of wind, always aware of other people sudden movements. Then the DASH, the sudden rush of all the people for the falling fruit. Like gladiators, pregnant women using their bellies as ramming grills, guys in cast for shields and crutches for weapons and old slow ladies using their cunningness and toothless smiles to charm the others from stomping her to death, all running for the single fruit. At the end of the day, they show their piles of mangoes like trophies . When I was in kindergarten somebody told me that the human heart is shaped like mango unlike the apple shape that we always draw. I got a zero mark from that advise, for I drew a heart and colored it yellow. My teacher did not believe me, I guess she needs to read more about human hearts.