On mangoes and matrescence
When I was a kid I loved mangoes. I still do. On trips to the grocery store at the right time of year, my mum would bring home a flat of mangoes just for me. My dad would feel through the box for the ripest one and slice off the flesh of one side, skimming the fibrous pit with a sharp blade. (He cut a mango a bit like he filleted freshly-caught salmon.) Then he would score the flesh in a criss-cross and turn it inside out before handing it to me, juicy and golden. I didn’t know where these green-yellow-red mangoes came from, but they were delicious.
I sit on our bed at the back of our house, with a nursing baby in my arms. Nothing here is ours, but I call it that. I like the idea of living in a place without needing to own it. ‘Ours’ is a home that many families have lived in before us. It sits on one corner of large lush square of land just east of Santa Cruz de la Sierra’s city centre. It’s been here since the 70s, welcoming foreigners who have come to Bolivia for short periods of time to work with Mennonite Central Committee. Around the house are many trees: a short, sturdy palm, avocado and achachairu, a toborochi, a coffee bush, and a mango tree.
At night, when the curtains are drawn back a bit, I can see the faint silhouettes of dangling mangoes. During the day, the light through the tree’s leaves dapple the curtains. (What makes those bright circles - that bokeh effect?)
This tree has been good company. I have watched its buds and flowers appear and the tiny mangoes take form. Some of them blew off the branches in strong wind, but even the tiniest nubs of fruit had a distinctly mango smell.
This morning my husband pokes his head through the window, checking if I’m awake and holding up his golden prize - one of the first ripe mangoes, plucked from the upper branches of the tree.
When times have been hard - and they have - I have wondered what’s keeping me here. Far from family, straining to communicate in a still-very-foreign language, in humidity that makes me sweat profusely from a light walk around the block. When I haven’t been able to connect to a deeper purpose in our work or a desire for personal growth or the kind of exposure to the world I want to offer my daughter, I have thought: mangoes. I’m here for the mangoes. I’m here at least until the mangoes ripen. I won’t leave without having tasted a ripe mango.
And now, here I am with a popped-inside-out dome of fruit, scored into cubic morsels. A piece of irridescent yellow-orange disco ball, so delcious it makes me want to dance. And I do.
