Danger: beware of falling mangos

It’s strange how eclectic life can be sometimes. Some days you’re on top of the world, nothing can stop you, you might as well put on some tights, and a cape and start fighting crime. Others though it’s like everything is out to get you. A few days ago I had the latter. I was dealing with the typical chanting of toubabo as I passed small groups of children by the school. The schools here sometimes more closely resemble an African depiction of “Lord of the Flies” than any form of learning institution. I told one of the teachers that once to give him a hard time… he didn’t get it. The same teacher that a month ago tried to explain to me that he doesn’t like speaking Mandinka to me because, “Your people come here, especially your women, and learn Mandinka very fast. So I will not speak modern Mandinka to you but my grandfathers Mandinka, or my grandfather’s grandfather’s Mandinka.” His tone ensued that women have no right to be smarter than men, I then told them that there wasn’t a word for it in the local language, but there was in English: Bigotry. I continued to walk past the school to the hospital for work and by some blessed coincidence stopped and greeted my friend Mustafa on the side of the road. Having completed an abridged greeting I began to walk under the shelter of another one of the copious mango trees. Clunk! Mere centimeters from my face fell a ripe softball sized mango. I laughed, mostly out of relief that I would if lucky, have received at least a concussion.

To children the mangos are part game part precious treasure. At the very sound of a mongo falling to the ground dozens of children instinctively flinch. If they are anywhere within fifty meters of it they’ll sprint, scrambling and scraping for a chance at the prize. It will end with the essential duality of competition, crying from scrapes, bites, and being mangoless or the triumphant glow of victory and quite literally the sweetness of it. This doesn’t happy everywhere mind you, in areas like mine where Mangos are more plentiful and the kids behaved they are very gracious, up country though it can be a street fight. I saw once visiting a friend of mine up country a kid fight with all his heart to get a mango, his scrawny frame enduring ample cuts and bruises; and when the dust settled and he held the trophy in his hand… he handed it to me, but I didn’t have the heart to accept it. I told him, “thank you very much but I’m full to the tip, you eat it”. I lied. So the mango that almost took my life fell in front of me, I like mangos but by no means need to eat them everyday as some people around here. A girl around 8 years old was sitting only ten feet from me off the path passing the time. Her eyes lit up at the sound of the mango’s impact so I gave it to her. Later I would be recounting the sheer horror of the near death experience to the Gambian hospital staff, and right after the “Clunk!” they injected, “So did you eat the mango?!?

On a side note the other day I had an interesting conversation with some men about the American presidential election. For some odd reason the entire country is fascinated about it and most of them keep more up to date on it than I do. I may just let them vote for me. The majority of them as you would have guessed are Obama fans and when the topic of Hilary came up this is what my host brother had to say, “Hillary can’t be president because there are many bad boys in America who want their freedom, and she is very slow. Obama will win, he is the man I support. He is very fast in brain too. He’s a young man, young men are much more capable of ruling than old men.” –Abdoulie A. Jarju.

I painted my house a few days ago. Well really just the doors and windows, a deep shade of blue, I’m going for the Mediterranean look it reminds me of Greece. I was painting, singing to the radio and attempting to guard my door from several very stubborn children who don’t understand the phrase, “don’t touch, wet paint.” While I was playing defensive linesmen to my house a few of my football players invited me to the bush to go hunting with them the next morning so they could show me some of the wildlife. I had been before but they needed the escape. Once again we had no luck hunting… especially considering we didn’t even have the dogs this time and were going to attempt to kill the squirrels with large sticks and our own wit. We walked all the way south past the village and walked past a border post. There we found a baboon, someone’s pet, tied up to a tree. Don’t worry I got pictures of it preening my hair, good times. The guy yelled at me and wanted me to pay him for the pictures but I told him in Mandinka I didn’t have any money and that it was impolite to give me a hard time about it. He thought I was British, so in English I told him to piss off.