Sitting on the porch of my tent one morning, on what may turn out to be a very rare day off, my reading was interrupted by a man climbing the tree that overshadows my home. I am glad it is there, as it cuts out the 35 to 40 degree heat for most of the day. That day was the day I discovered what else it is good for. The man is climbing for Mangos.
He is being a helpful soul. Some of the other guests in the compound have realised that the mangos are in season, and want to have some fresh fruit. The mans lady friend objected to him climbing, saying that he will not reach them. "You will see" he said. All he needed to do was stand on the branches that held ripe fruit and shake them until the mangos dropped. The other guests happily collected their bounty and threw a couple over a fence to me. This left me thinking: Why the hell did I not realise that I was sitting underneath a tree that had fruit that was coming into season?
I had heard the sound of the fruit dropping before. Mangoes are pretty heavy, and dropping from the top of those very tall trees onto the canvas of your house at 3am is pretty disturbing for the first couple of nights. Somehow, though, it failed to register in my mind that food was falling all around me.
The idea of food growing on trees just did not enter my head for several days of living under these huge trees. It just does not seem to be part of this city person's thinking. When I think of getting breakfast, I think of BUYING it. I don't really associate it with growing on trees except in a purely logical sense. I mean, I know that some fruits grows on trees. I have even seen a few trees where this process was occurring while I watched. I have even picked a few fruits and berries myself. Hard to believe this of someone from a huge metropolis, but I swear it to be true! I guess the main issues is that it usually happens very far from where I happen to be. Fruit = supermarket before fruit = tree.
Not so anymore. I am now in a place where nature is not so far away. In fact, it sometimes drops on your head. Please don't misunderstand me, we do not live in a garden of eden here. The mango trees grow so tall because they are irrigated by the Nile, which meanders along a few metres away from where I sit and read. The grounds are maintained by the compound staff, and wandering mango thieves are kept away by the twenty four hour security. Well, except for one particular group of thieves. One of the reasons I may not have made the connection between the 'thwack' in the night and mangos on the ground in the morning was that the guards allow in a horde of children at the break of dawn, who run through the compound and pick all the fruit from the ground.
The bounty of nature does not extend far beyond the banks of the river. Most of Juba is dust, and it is getting very dry now. Nature is now spending a lot of time bounteously filling my sandals with sand as I walk along the side of the few tarmaced roads, and stumble through the dirt street. In the evenings, I might wander past the small cattle market that is just around the corner from home, the cows and bulls penned in shoulder to shoulder, their three foot long curved horns forming shadowy crescent moons in the dusk. Goats often pass me in the street, either by themselves or driven in a small herd by scurrying young men with flimsy sticks. They are driving them through the streets because the goats are grazing. They are pretty much the only recycling facility that the majority of citizens ever see. The rest of this poorly irrigated country is wilting under the sun of the dry season, with perhaps only some of the marshy areas keeping their moisture. Even the forested areas suffer in the heat.
Agriculture depends almost entirely on rainfall in South Sudan. I guess this keeps people in the habit of measuring the passing of the two seasons. Even if your family did not have to grow any food for itself, you are likely to have grown up in a place where plenty of people did. At the very least, with little food and little shelter, anyone here will learn to watch the skies. I did not grow up like this. My house was warm. The snow was fun for kids, merely annoying for adults. The rain was constant and could be ignored. As for fruit trees, they largely existed in the supermarket. In this country, this may make me a little stupid.
But that is ok, because I am now learning. Those kids that collected the fruit? They were smarter than me. They knew about the fruit already, thus demonstrating a deeper knowledge of the natural world than I have. Well they aren't going to feel so smart anymore! I will show them. I am now in-tune with nature, and will demonstrate this by getting up ridiculously early in order to steal those mangos from under their noses.
He is being a helpful soul. Some of the other guests in the compound have realised that the mangos are in season, and want to have some fresh fruit. The mans lady friend objected to him climbing, saying that he will not reach them. "You will see" he said. All he needed to do was stand on the branches that held ripe fruit and shake them until the mangos dropped. The other guests happily collected their bounty and threw a couple over a fence to me. This left me thinking: Why the hell did I not realise that I was sitting underneath a tree that had fruit that was coming into season?
I had heard the sound of the fruit dropping before. Mangoes are pretty heavy, and dropping from the top of those very tall trees onto the canvas of your house at 3am is pretty disturbing for the first couple of nights. Somehow, though, it failed to register in my mind that food was falling all around me.
The idea of food growing on trees just did not enter my head for several days of living under these huge trees. It just does not seem to be part of this city person's thinking. When I think of getting breakfast, I think of BUYING it. I don't really associate it with growing on trees except in a purely logical sense. I mean, I know that some fruits grows on trees. I have even seen a few trees where this process was occurring while I watched. I have even picked a few fruits and berries myself. Hard to believe this of someone from a huge metropolis, but I swear it to be true! I guess the main issues is that it usually happens very far from where I happen to be. Fruit = supermarket before fruit = tree.
Not so anymore. I am now in a place where nature is not so far away. In fact, it sometimes drops on your head. Please don't misunderstand me, we do not live in a garden of eden here. The mango trees grow so tall because they are irrigated by the Nile, which meanders along a few metres away from where I sit and read. The grounds are maintained by the compound staff, and wandering mango thieves are kept away by the twenty four hour security. Well, except for one particular group of thieves. One of the reasons I may not have made the connection between the 'thwack' in the night and mangos on the ground in the morning was that the guards allow in a horde of children at the break of dawn, who run through the compound and pick all the fruit from the ground.
The bounty of nature does not extend far beyond the banks of the river. Most of Juba is dust, and it is getting very dry now. Nature is now spending a lot of time bounteously filling my sandals with sand as I walk along the side of the few tarmaced roads, and stumble through the dirt street. In the evenings, I might wander past the small cattle market that is just around the corner from home, the cows and bulls penned in shoulder to shoulder, their three foot long curved horns forming shadowy crescent moons in the dusk. Goats often pass me in the street, either by themselves or driven in a small herd by scurrying young men with flimsy sticks. They are driving them through the streets because the goats are grazing. They are pretty much the only recycling facility that the majority of citizens ever see. The rest of this poorly irrigated country is wilting under the sun of the dry season, with perhaps only some of the marshy areas keeping their moisture. Even the forested areas suffer in the heat.
Agriculture depends almost entirely on rainfall in South Sudan. I guess this keeps people in the habit of measuring the passing of the two seasons. Even if your family did not have to grow any food for itself, you are likely to have grown up in a place where plenty of people did. At the very least, with little food and little shelter, anyone here will learn to watch the skies. I did not grow up like this. My house was warm. The snow was fun for kids, merely annoying for adults. The rain was constant and could be ignored. As for fruit trees, they largely existed in the supermarket. In this country, this may make me a little stupid.
But that is ok, because I am now learning. Those kids that collected the fruit? They were smarter than me. They knew about the fruit already, thus demonstrating a deeper knowledge of the natural world than I have. Well they aren't going to feel so smart anymore! I will show them. I am now in-tune with nature, and will demonstrate this by getting up ridiculously early in order to steal those mangos from under their noses.
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