20-04-2007
Kulungungu

The Art of Eating Mangoes
One of my favorite things about living in Ghana is that I truly do eat seasonally. In the last few weeks it has started to become “pear” (avocado) season, and now it is in full swing. I can always get fresh tomatoes, onions, and chili peppers (“pepe”) and so with a little advance hoarding of limes (which are sadly falling out of season, along with lettuce and the now vanished from market carrots), I can make a kick-ass guacamole. Since there is still lettuce (what is locally referred to as “salad” to my amusement) I can make a nice guacamole salad, complete with homemade croutons. After my two month long bout of amebas I am careful to soak my fresh veggies in iodine water then rinse them off with filtered water, and lo and behold I can have fresh salad!

Now, mangoes are also coming into season, and found everywhere are the small fist sized yellow skinned mangoes in the miraculously clean hands of small boys. My confession is that I have been struggling for weeks to consume these mangoes; the pit is easily two-thirds the size of the fruit itself. After peeling the mango I stupidly have been struggling to cut off the meat of the fruit with a knife, managing only to cover my hands in sticky orange stringy glue and eking out a tablespoon of the jam like substance onto my waiting plate.

We can get the larger, green skinned mangoes that I am used to seeing imported in the market stalls of NYC, large with plenty of fruit that can be sliced off and eaten by the chunk, it’s just that these mangoes (called grafted mangoes) are not yet in season. I decided that I just couldn’t be bothered anymore and I would wait for the larger fruits, which I had already seen appearing in the lusher, wetter, Northern region city of Tamale (which compared to the south is anything but lush). I finally learned the secret art of eating the small local mangoes from my friend and supervisor, Mallam. We were talking about food and nutrition, a favorite topic of ours, (along with “motos”, travel, funding, and disenfranchised youth), and I told him that I was waiting for the grafted mangoes to appear at market. Mallam, ever intuitive, (or just very used to Americans) told me that there is a way to eat them that you won’t get dirty and “you can enjoy the fruit very well”, that is, to peel and eat the mango like a banana, with the peel over your hand eating the fruit around the pit. He’s a genius. I still haven’t attempted it, but when I next see mangoes at market I will pick up a few and practice.


Some Nights Are Better Than Others
Last night I was forced out of my living room and into my bed and under my mosquito net by a swarm of insects. The swarm is what happens after or before, rain, or really whenever rain may be a possibility. Of course, like everything here, it’s a bit surreal – not actually dangerous, but like something out of a B horror movie. The insects, you see, are the African equivalent of no-see-ums, those ubiquitous and harmless bugs that invade your space at the beach on hot sultry summer days, driving you into the water only to be plagued by them again on your return to the scorching sands. These no-see-ums however, are African, so they are the size of small ants, but with wings of course. They come out at night, and when the power is on they flock by the hundreds to the incandescent light in my living room, and stay there attracted to my body heat and sweat. Some nights I can handle it, turn the fan on high, become absorbed in a movie, and swat my way through the night until bedtime. Not last night. I bathed, retreated to my bed net and waited out the heat until it was cool enough to fall asleep.


The Ethnographer at Work
“I am not a television” I finally pronounce in frustration to the gathering of women and small girls on the bench staring at me in my yard as I sit perched over my bucket of dirty soapy laundry. The girls laugh, mimic me, and, miraculously, turn around and face the other way. Sometimes you have no way of knowing what will translate across cultural barriers; words uttered in frustration have as equal chance of success as the best planned linguistic and cultural tactics.