Bye-Bye Mangoza

My beautiful host siblings, Njabuliso and Notsopi, next to some beautiful peach mangoes in the yard of our homestead.

Saturday morning after tea, my sister decided that she wanted to say bye-bye to the mangoza. So one of the children was ordered out with a basin to glean the last fruits from the trees, now almost completely devoid of their former glory. When Wandile returned with the bowl full of mishapen, half-rotten and spotty mangoes, I wondered what kind of farewell this would be. I almost felt like one of those people who don't want to see a dear friend in a casket, because they'd rather remember them as they were in their best moments of life. Did I really want my last taste of this magnificent fruit to be these inferior specimens? I had almost decided to stick with all my magical mango memories (especially since I was already full from cups of heavily-sugared rooibos tea and slices of thick brown bread spread generously with peanut butter). But then the sweet scent and the sight of the golden mango flesh that my sister was already enjoying across the room pushed me to rise and rummage in the basin for some firm fish mangoes.

The first rule of navigating the Swazi mango season (roughly beginning of December - beginning of February, with its glorious peak in January) is to know your types. I'll order them according to my personal preference:

1. Paraffin These medium-sized mangoes fit well into your hand, because of their size and shape - rounded at the base with a little nub at the other end. They have thick green skin, which doesn't change colour until it's pretty mushy, so the only way to tell if it's ripe is to give it a little squeeze before you pluck it from the tree. They get really overly-sweet when too ripe, and I prefer them a little on the green side. I've eaten some so green that the flesh was a pale, pastel yellow and it had the crunchy texture of an apple. That was only on days when I was really, really desperate for my mango fix. A paraffin mango when at the pinnacle of its perfection has a rich, smooth, firm texture. The flesh is a bright, golden yellow. The taste is sweet, but paraffin mangoes have another level of flavour: a unique tang, a little tartness, that makes them my favourite.

2. Peach Peach mangoes are usually about half the size of paraffin mangoes, about the size of a tennis ball, but oddly and asymmetrically-shaped. When ripe they will blush an adorable shade of deep pink, which makes me think of them as shy little girls embarrased about their strange shapes. They have a lovely smooth texture, like the paraffin mango, but the taste differentiates them. Think of crossing a peach with a mango and you've pretty much got it: a sweet, smooth, rich flavour that trickles easily down your tongue and makes these little fruits addictive.

3. Red Giants I don't know what the real name for these monsters is, but the one I made up suits them perfectly. I've been told that they're another species of paraffin but I have trouble believing this. They're enormous - I bet they can easily weigh a pound. They don't grow in this region, so I've only had a few, purchased at the market or received as gifts from those dwelling in the lowveld. In the market they cost E 5 or 6, which is the price of a large bag of carrots or tomatoes, or three heads of lettuce! I had one really delicious one that reminded me of the kind of mangoes we used to get in Benin. But most of the ones I've had weren't that great, slightly green with a diluted taste, as if they only had enough flavour for a normal-sized mango, but then they just kept growing.

4. Fish I had to laugh when I first heard someone talking about fish mangoes - but that's because I hadn't seen one yet. A few days later, I spied a tree and instantly knew wha tthe fruit was, because the name describes them so perfectly. They're probably about 4-6 inches long, and a green colour that shades to deep red in patches when ripe. But their curvy, S-shape does make them look rather like small green fishies hanging upside down from the branches. There's nothing special about the taste however, they're just sweet and will do if there's no other mango available.

5. Mango These mangoes apparantly don't even get a special name, being at the bottom of the hierarchy. They're the smallest kind, even smaller than peach mangoes, and they're a crazy mix of green, yellow, and red, with black spots where they've started to rot. The principle reason why they have such a low ranking is their strings! Their texture is made up of lots and lots of little fibres, which get stuck in every crevice of your teeth and sometimes make their way down your throat, making you cough and gag. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to eat them at all is because they seem to have the longest growing season: they were the first to appear in December and now they're pretty much all that's still left, along with the odd fish mango.

So, now that you're somewhat familiar with the world of mangoes, we can move on to acquiring them from the tree. I shocked my family at home by scaling a tree once, desperate for peach mangoes. "Uyati gibela!" ("You know how to climb trees!) shrieked my siblings in astonishment. I take it that this isn't something adults normally do here. And indeed, at home the task of mango collection falls to my two little brothers, the tingobiyane(monkeys) of the family. It really is amazing the high branches they can scurry along, finding the prizes and dropping them into our waiting hands as me and my sisters make a game out of who can catch the most. At the office, we have two magnificent paraffin trees, huge and very fertile. They must have each produced hundreds of mangoes. I'm the only one at work who will actually climb the trees (the others prefer to whack down the fruit with a long section of pipe laying around the yard). I spent many happy moments on mango quests, often taking time just to sit in the branches and lose myself in daydreams of becoming a monkey and spending the rest of my life in this enormous tree, eating mangoes all day. Some days this seemed like a very attractive option! But I always came down sooner or later, despite my coworkers' fears of me falling and breaking my neck.

And now the best part - we have the mangoes and now we can eat them! Just two basic rules:

1. Wash the mango first. Some people just eat them like an apple, biting into it skin and all. I tried this, and the skin can make a nice crunchy addition to the smoothness of the flesh. But mostly people choose to use a knife and slice away the skin, then cut the flesh off the pit in sections, and then finally sucking on the pit to get every last scrap of mango off. I'm famous at home for "washing" my mango pits because I suck them so clean!

2. You can't eat just one mango. I've never had less than two in one sitting, unless it's after a full supper. But usually, if you're just eating them as a snack on their own, you have at least three or four. Sometimes there will be mango-eating marathons, when a group of people just whiles away the afternoon with talk and a large bucket of mangoes. I know for a fact by counting the pits that a sister of mine (who shall remain nameless) once had 10 peach mangoes in one sitting! My personal record for one sitting is seven. And then I felt sick. But I didn't overeat mangoes as often as you might guess. Once, early on in my time here, I was ill for two days with bad diarhea from eating too much of an overripe papaya. Since then, I can't even look at a popo without feeling stomach cramps coming on. And my love for the mango runs too deep to allow myself to have a similar experience with my favourite fruit. So mostly I managed to restrain myself to five or six throughout the course of a day.

And now, this source of daily joy in my life has faded away, gone for another year. I already know how depressed I will be next year at this time, in the deepest dark of the Canadian winter, dreaming for a little taste of sweet golden sunshine on my tongue... My host family has already pointed out to me that I won't be here next year for the mango season. (They've seen how devoted I am to my fruit. Yes, I said MY fruit - Mango Mimi, that's my name. Before mangoes arrived, when I was drooling with anticipation, my sister Zinhle warned me that "in the middle of mango season when we're harvesting buckets of them, there will come a time when you say 'I don't want mangoes! I've had enough!'" And I replied 'Ngeke!' ('Never!') with great feeling, and I've kept my word - I never turned down a mango.) So when I whined "Ngitokhala!" ("I'm going to cry!") at the prospect of no more mangoes, they were quick to console me with the promise of what is yet to come: I'm already seeing the small green likotapeni (avocadoes) on the trees, and yesterday I knawed through my first green guava.