Peace Day

September 21st was international Peace Day. Personally, I think that having just one day out of 365 being devoted to peace seems absurd (I also feel this way about mother’s day, international women’s day, African American history month). But, if Peace was getting a day, I was going to jump on the bandwagon to do something extra-special for Peace. When September started I had a vision of evolving Peace Day into Peace Month. I was inspired by one of my best PCV friends, Kelsey, who was planning something similar in her site.

I give a weekly English class in my community, and I thought it would be a great vessel to execute my Peace Month plan. The English classes are a little less than 2 hours long. So my plan was for the entire month of September to devote the last half of each lesson to an activity that promoted and encouraged peace. I’ve been in somewhat of a Peace Corps rut these days, and I was going to use Peace Day as a way to introduce a new series of activities, a new short lived project, into my life. I needed a way to reenergize myself, and I had found my metaphorical cup of coffee.

The first Monday of September I go to my community center ready to launch my first Peace Month lesson. Wrong. I go to my community center only to find it flooded from the day’s downpour. A few of my students and I spent the entire class time sweeping water out of a giant building.

This is not the first time we’ve had to do this, so I’m only a little surprised. However, I am pretty bummed that my shiny new project literally got rained on. I save my lesson plan for another day, and head home to eat my rice and beans. At least I taught the value of respecting community space and pride in community through the cleaning of the community center. Right? Well, that’s how I spun the evening to myself in order to go to sleep a little less sad about the postponing of Peace Month.

Enter the second Monday of September. I had my same lesson plan all ready to go, I was a little less excited, but still looking forward to the opportunity to talk about peace. So I get to my recently cleaned community center early. I always get there a little early to give myself time to prepare. I started setting up. I set up. I wait, and wait. My students collectively show up over a half an hour late. Because we missed last Monday we had to review a lot, there were more questions, we had less time, and we never got to the Peace Month activity half of the lesson. I put the lesson plan back in my bag, and went home to eat my rice and beans. At least my students still came, even if it was half an hour late. I went to bed a little sad that Peace Month was dwindling down to Peace 2 weeks, but satisfied with the material we had covered in class.

Enter the third Monday of September. I arrive at the center. It’s not flooded (good sign). So I unlock the doors, turn on the lights, and set up for class. And wait for my students to arrive. Only three students show up. This is the lowest turn out I’ve ever had for a class. I have a solid group of 8 that come to class regularly. I was a bit disheartened that my students had decided to skip, but glad for the ones that showed up. Low turn out rates is a common phenomenon in Peace Corps land, especially in small communities like mine where there are only 500 people to work with. Not everyone is interested, has time, is brave enough to leave their house, etc. I’ve become less bothered by numbers, and try to focus on the quality of my programs. If I have a really great class with three students, that means that I got to reach three different people. (But sometimes it is hard to quiet the over-achiever voice that demands higher numbers-- tragically I’ve found that I have internalized the “more-is-better” mantra of US culture, as much as I wish it wasn’t so, and it is something that I constantly battle with.)

So, with my three students, we sat down and had a discussion about peace. We talked about what it meant to have peace for the world, for their country, for their community, and for themselves. They were quick to point out that their country doesn’t have an army. Costa Rica solves its international problems diplomatically, without arms. We talked about how that could be a lesson we could each apply to our lives as individuals, that we could learn to drop our weapons and talk about our problems. The discussion went over pretty well- especially considering the participants were a 4^th grade girl, a 6^th grade boy, and a 10^th grade boy. After the discussion we designed “peace doves.” I had cut out the outline of a dove a flying, and asked each student to write a peaceful message on each dove, and then decorate it as they wanted. I had over estimated our “peace dove” needs, and had extra doves. The kids loved decorating their doves, and each wanted to do multiple doves. One of my student’s parents came in the class towards the end and got pretty excited about the doves. She made three different ones and started talking to the kids about peace, and what peace means to her. It was the most parent involvement I’ve ever had in any of my classes. It was so awesome and spontaneous, I was grateful for her input. It was neat to see this mother participating and giving life to my Peace Day activity. After the class was over I had wanted to hang the doves in the community center, but the kids really wanted to put them on their notebooks—and our community is hosting a dance in the center next week—so they pasted their doves in their notebooks. It was a short and simple activity that was delivered two weeks late to a group of three students. I had something completely different planned in my head that what happened. I was satisfied with the activity, but in a different way than I had anticipated.

In a way, this story could be a metaphor for my entire Peace Corps experience. I signed up for this journey with a plan. I thought I knew what I was getting into. I thought I knew what I would be doing. Wrong and wrong. I had no idea what was ahead of me and I’m still getting the hang of things. Yet, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.

Independence Month

Costa Rica celebrates its independence on September 15^th (officially) but the Independence Day activities happen all month long. Today for instance, the 16^th of September, there is no school. Why? Why not!

The month starts with “civic week” where schools across the nation have morning assemblies under certain patriotic themes. These assemblies are called “actos civicos” or, you guessed it, “civic acts.” Teachers talk to the students about what it means to be a Costa Rican, how to be a good citizen, or whatever occurs to them. My favorite “acto civico” speech was about the dangers of cyber-bullying delivered to a group of 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders—out of the whole group only one 1^st grade girl has access to a computer (without internet). At the “actos civicos” there is a salute to the flag and 3-5 patriotic songs are sung. These songs are long, and the Spanish is so formal and antiquated that I can’t make sense of them, I just hum along.

After “civic week” is over “civic month” begins. There are still “actos civicos” every morning, but now there are nationwide holidays to celebrate, as well. The first is the “running of the torch.” Every year on September 13^th the “running of the torch” begins. The run starts up on the Nicaraguan border where a torch is passed from the Nicaraguans to the Costa Ricans. The Costa Ricans take the torch and the torch travels from town to town until it reaches the Panamanian border. The torch represents the light/hope/knowledge of independence.

September 14^th there is a lantern parade at night. School children and their parents make paper lanterns. Everyone gathers at the school grounds for an “acto civico” and then they all light their lanterns and walk around the community.

September 15^th is the official Independence Day celebration. In Upala there is a parade! Everyone meets up at the high school for the mandatory “acto civico” and then the parade begins. School bands and dance troupes, police officers, and fire fighters march through the city. The parade ends at the park (which is where I went to watch it). In the park gazebo a man with giant speaker announces each group that walks by. After the groups reach the end of the parade route they go to the basketball court to perform their act one last time.

Independence Day/Month is a huge event. Groups practice intensely for the parade, kids work hard on their paper lanterns, and teachers work hard on trying to find relevant things to say for all the “actos civicos” that take place.

Food

Breakfast: rice and beans, avocado, coffee
Lunch: rice and beans, cooked plantain, fruit juice
Dinner: rice and beans, tomato, fruit juice

Repeat for 11 months.

My diet is that of a typical Costa Rican living in the countryside. Rice and beans are the main event at each meal and they are generally accompanied by a third item, which varies. Usually all the food gets mixed together in the same bowl. Some of the more interesting combos include: rice beans and spaghetti, rice and beans and mashed potatoes, rice and beans and milk soup. Another cultural side note: there is a belief in the Costa Rican country side that spices are bad for your health and are therefore are rarely used.
I try my best to integrate into my community and live and eat as they live and eat. But, sometimes, I get bored of rice and beans. This is incomprehensible in Costa Rica, but I’m sure my US citizen readership will appreciate the sentiment. When I explain to my Costa Rican friends that most people in the US don’t eat rice and beans everyday, they get very confused. But what do you eat???? What fills you up? How do you make sure you are getting a nutritious meal? These are the typical questions that follow the state of disbelief that a person can sustain themselves without constantly eating rice and beans. A meal is not a meal unless it includes rice and beans. I made a pizza for my host family- and for dinner we had rice and beans and pizza.
The elementary school once decided to vary what they served in the cafeteria and cut back on the rice and beans. They wanted to try serving more fresh fruits and vegetables and give the children a more varied diet. The experiment didn’t last for very long. When the children came home for school and the parents asked them what they ate at school, they would respond: nothing. In their minds they hadn’t eaten because they hadn’t been served rice and beans. Parents got upset that their children “weren’t eating” and everyone went back on the rice and beans diet.

In a world of culinary monotony and limited access to ingredients, I have been pushed to become very creative in how I supplement my diet to include flavor and variety. Here are some of the things I’ve learned to make from scratch while in Costa Rica:

Bagels
Yogurt
Greek yogurt
Peanut butter
Granola bars
Salt water taffy
Lemon Bars
Cinnamon Buns
Brownies
Creamy garlic salad dressing
Black bean burgers
No-bake cheesecake

Among others

I usually make snack foods and deserts because I want to eat my meals with my host family. But I’m on the rice and beans breaking point. I don’t know how much longer I can do it. Soon, I’m sure, I will crack.
I friend suggested I start a recipes tab on my blog to add different Costa Rican and US recipes that I’ve tried and enjoyed. It’s not a bad idea and I’m going to try and figure it out. Keep your eyes peeled

July

Today I had a free day. The English teachers are in a regional meeting and English class was cancelled. They are meeting up in an effort to contextualize the curriculum to life in Upala. I tried to get in on the action, but the person organizing the meeting didn’t think that a foreigner would be of much use contextualizing the curriculum to local culture. So, instead of helping revamp the English curriculum (I’m a little sour about being excluded) I spent the morning reading and doing laundry. The book I’m reading right now is called Into Thin Air. It’s about a deadly attempt to summit Everest. Its really got me captivated, although it may be more about the fact that reading about snow and ice has an extreme allure as I sit in a tank-top and shorts in front of my fan. As I was reading about Jon Krakauer searching for oxygen in below freezing temperatures there was a troop of howler monkeys playing in the mango tree outside my room. Its amazing how reading lets you escape into another world. Reading has been a consistent pleasure in my Peace Corps life.

This past month I have had a bit of time to work on secondary projects. There is a two week break from school in July. It marks the transition between semesters. Another PCV who lives and Upala and I had been scheming up ways to make a 4 day long summer camp possible for 40 kids. We’d been busting our butts running around getting donations (shout out to Aunt Maureen for the embroidery thread!), getting kids signed up, soliciting youth to help be counselors, and roping in other nearby PCVs to help out. After a few months of planning, it was finally time to put the camp into action. The concepts of summer camp, day camp, and overnight camp, are well woven into the fabric of US culture, but not so much in Costa Rica. We told all the parents that it was a day camp, from 7-11, and that the kids would go home in the afternoon. It was all very confusing that the camp would be held locally, that the kids were not spending the night, and that we would not be having a camp fire. These were points of contention that no one really believed until after the first day of camp was over.

The first day of camp, about half the counselors did not show, but it was just as well because about half the kids that signed up didn’t show either. Its not a surprising statistic, Costa Ricans are notorious for agreeing to participate in events (dinners, outings, etc) knowing very well that they have no intention of showing up. It’s a reflection of a societal need to give positive answers to their friends and to try to please. (Its better to make Julia happy now by telling her that I am going to her camp, she can be sad later when I don’t show up). But, being the hopeless, stubborn, optimist idealists that we are, we planned for all 40 kids to show up to camp. Next year we will invite twice as many kids as we are prepared to handle, lesson learned (yet again). The good news is now we have planted the idea of seed of what a summer camp is, and we have a bunch of extra materials for crafts. Next year can only be better.

Despite the lower than anticipated number of children, camp went really well. Everyday we did arts and crafts, so they had something to take home and share with their parents. For one craft we painted plastic bottles in half, painted them, and used them as flower planters. Mine is being used as a holder for basil – I have hopes of slowly introducing spices to my community via my own spice garden, I really hope it catches on. There was a reoccurring theme of reduce, reuse, recycle during our camp. Later in the week we had a lesson on trash decomposition and the value of reducing/reusing/recycling our waste. We also made wallets out of old milk and juice boxes—these are awesome and kids love them, a PCV taught me how to make them awhile back, I wish I could say the idea was my own-- We also made friendship bracelets and macaroni necklaces. Everyday we did group building activities. Everyday these proved challenging. Working in groups with new people and trusting the same new people are not things that these kids from small communities have had to do much experience with. I’m gald we got to work through the activities though; at least it gave them a taste of how it might be to work with new people in the future. The last activity every day was a big group game. The games were always competitive, and the kids had no problem with learning new types of competitive games. The group games were a hit with the kids, who spend most of their active time playing soccer and were excited about discovering new games to play. And so went summer camp- playing games, making crafts, doing group building activities, and making new friends. It was exhausting but totally worth it. We’ve already had requests to bring camp back next year.

I’ve also started spending time teaching some youth how to dance bachata and meringue. I’m not sure how it all got started. I think I was dancing by myself to bachata music that was playing in the house and a friend asked if I could teach him to dance. Now I have five students. They all really want to learn how to dance, but are incredibly shy and reluctant to do the footwork. I’m being patient with them, though, and taking class slowly. Their first chance to dance at an actual dance will be this Saturday. There is a benefit dinner to support seniors being held in the community center, and a band is coming to play. We’ll see if my students are brave enough to take their moves to the dance floor. We may have an emergency practice session on Friday before the dinner. Saturday I will be busy baking 200 cinnamon rolls for the dinner (I’ve made them a few times here and they are a huge hit, the committee really wants them for the dinner, too) then I’m supposed to help the ladies cook the meal. I am all about this community event. We are going to have good food, good music, and good dancing, and raising money for a good cause.

Road Rage

The water’s out right now. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the Upala region, but its frequency doesn’t make it any less annoying when it happens. Last night there was an accident on a bridge over the Chimurria river and a car hit the water pipe that runs beside the bridge. The bridge hasn’t had guard rails for the past year and a half, and has always been a major safety concern for the community. One of the guard rails was taken off during a flood and the other was taken off during a car accident. About a year ago the elementary school organized a petition to the municipality to fix the bridge, but the petition was basically ignored, and the bridge has remained guardrail-less. People are talking about using this accident as motivation to write another petition. I hope this time the municipality listens.

There was another accident earlier this week on the same stretch of road. A student from the elementary school was riding his bike home from school and he got hit by a motorcycle. He experienced some serious head trauma and they had to airlift him to the big hospital in San Jose. At first we weren’t sure if he was going to make it, but it looks like he is going to pull through. The stretch of road that he was riding on was the 1km of highway between the elementary school and the entrance for the pineapple plantations. Along this stretch is the guardrail-less bridge. About half of the students in the elementary school have to walk or ride their bikes down this stretch of highway in order to go to school. There are no school busses for elementary school, just high school. The highway is the biggest safety concern that my community faces, and I worry about my students that have to walk on the highway to get to school. I would love to see a sidewalk here, but I just don’t know where to begin to start up a project of that scale.
My secondary projects that I’m working on right now are much less grand, but are still taking up a lot of my energy. Some of the women in the community and I have started up a workout group for women and children. We do it twice a week for one hour sessions. For me, the class is important because there is no other organized effort to encourage fitness in women or children. The men have a soccer team, but the women’s soccer team disbanded a few years ago. At first there was a lot of interest in the workout group, but participation has started to drop off. We’ve been going for about two months now and I need to find a new way to get the momentum going again.

Another project I’m working on is organizing a summer camp. There is a two week break from school in July, and the pcv in Upala and I are working together to create a free summer camp for 40 kids. We’ve been working hard at figuring out crafts and activities that we can do that are entertaining and super low budget. We’ve also been writing letters asking for donations, and we walked around the town of Upala going to certain businesses asking if they could donate materials to our camp. I’ve also been writing letters trying to get snacks donated. We have been pretty successful so far. Some businesses were not interested in helping, but there were quite a few who were willing to help us out. We are still working on collecting materials- paint, thread to make friendship bracelets, and a few other small things. We are getting local youth to volunteer to be camp counselors, and some of our pcv friends want to help out, too. It really looks like we are going to pull this off. The camp will take place the second week of July, so we still have time to tie together all the loose ends. I am really looking forward to camp and seeing how it all turns out!


I have a lot of work to keep me busy, which is good because it is helping distract me from a big wave of homesickness that just struck. Three of my very good friends from college came up to visit me a few weeks ago. I had a blast hanging out with them, and they brought out parts of my personality that I mostly have to abandon while in my site. In my site I am always in bed by 9, no one thinks I’m funny, I’m always taken very seriously and I always take myself very seriously, all the other twenty-something’s are married with children and I don’t have a peer group. Loneliness is my biggest struggle as a PCV. It was nice to hang out with my friends from home and remember who I used to be. It was nice to have people laugh at my jokes and to have a social life again.

While my friends were visiting, I had an excuse to go traveling around Costa Rica! For most of my time as a volunteer I have stayed in my site and gone to San Jose a few times, but I haven’t really seen much of Costa Rica. It was great to go travel around this country like a tourist. We went dancing in San Jose, we went to Manuel Antonio- a national park along a beach, we toured the pineapple plantation of Upala, and we went to see the Arenal Volcano. The Peace Corps stipend I get doesn’t allow for me to do a lot of touristy things, but I got to see the sites and spend time with my friends. It was a really fun week, and it has been a little hard re-adjusting to life in my site. I miss my friends.

More mangos

The week before Easter, holy week, is a week of prayer, reflection, mass, and if you work in the public school system: vacation. A PC friend came to visit me during holy week. She lives in the mountains, where they have coffee and apples. She is deprived of mangos, and since in Upala we have mangos coming out of our ears, we went to town and bought ourselves a bag of 10 perfectly ripe and extremely delicious mangos. Here is what we did with them:
3 mangos went into mango/orange juice popsicles.
2 mangos went to regular mango eating.
5 mangos went into a mango pie.
Our mango pie- while a great idea- ended up a little overcooked. So it turned into mango slop, but it was still delicious. We made a homemade cookie crumb crust (there are no graham crackers here) but we still ended out with a delicious crust. That was the only part that came out normal.
The filling: 4 mangos, sliced, and cooked down. A little bit of cream cheese, cinnamon, orange juice, cornstarch for thickener, and some nutmeg. We cooked the mangos down, and ended up cooking them into mush. Oops. But we added chunks of another ripe mango and 2 cut up bananas to add some texture back to it. In the end it was a sloppy mess of delicious flavors, and I could have eaten the entire thing by myself.

Another day that my friend was here we went on this ridiculous adventure. Her parents were Peace Corps Volunteers in Costa Rica in the 70s. Her Dad worked in a community called Los Chiles, which is in my neck of the woods. To get to it from Upala you have to go about 2.5 hours down a gravel road. From my site there are two busses that go to Los Chiles, one at 4:30 am, and another at 11am. The thing is, the last return bus leaves Los Chiles at 12 noon. In order to get there and come back on the same day we had to catch the 4:30 bus. We got to the bus stop a little early, in case the bus cam early. Nope. It came at 5:20, almost an hour late. So we got to see the sun creep up over Chimurria and listen to the howler monkeys wake up. The early morning, as painful as it is to get myself out of bed, is always worth it. It is easily the most peaceful time of day, and more importantly, the coolest. After about 8am the sweating starts.
So, we waited and waited and waited, got on the bus, rode down the dirt road, and arrived in Los Chiles just in time to get a typical Costa Rican breakfast from a little soda. Soda’s are small food serving establishments that offer typical Costa Rican food and have the low prices. The atmosphere is always plastic chairs, plastic table, plastic table cloth. The menu is just as predictable as the plastic decor. Breakfast: rice and beans, a coffee, and an egg. Lunch/Dinner: rice and beans and a plantain and a piece of meat.
Breakfast rice and beans are called “gallo pinto” roughly translated as “painted rooster.” They are different from lunch rice and beans because they are cooked together with onion and garlic, usually cilantro, and some salsa Lizano. Salsa Lizano is to Costa Rica as Ketchup is to the United States.
Lunch and Dinner rice and beans are served on a mixed plate called a “casado” or “married man.” A “casado” is a plate consisting primarily of rice and beans accompanied by a plantain and a serving of a third item (a piece of meat, some chopped veggies, etc).
That is your basic “soda” menu. It might vary a little from establishment to establishment. But you can’t find a soda that doesn’t offer “gallo pinto” for breakfast and a “casado” for lunch or dinner.
So, we got a gallo pinto at a soda in Los Chiles, and began our adventure. Our goal was to find the house that her dad had lived in, and maybe find some old friends. We got to the street where he had lived on, and knocked on doors asking people if they remembered a US citizen living there about 30 years ago. Addresses in Costa Rica are vague and never involve numbers or street names. So, we supposed that we found the street her dad lived on, but we weren’t entirely sure. We knew he lived in the middle of the street, but we didn’t know which house. The town of Los Chiles has exploded since the 70s, meaning now it has paved roads instead of dirt roads, and the population has grown substantially. All the people now living on that block had only lived in Los Chiles for about 20 years, and didn’t know her dad.
Then we went to the Red Cross, where her dad had worked, but the lady there had also not been there long enough to remember her dad.
Our last stop was the Catholic church. The priest had changed, but he talked to a secretary who did remember her dad. She referred us to another secretary, who went out and randomly asked a woman who was getting ready to attend a service if she knew of the ex PCV. And we had success. The woman we ended up tracking down was the sister of her dad’s best Costa Rican friend. They were the best of friends, and he ended up naming his youngest daughter after my friend’s mom. They had lost contact about eight years ago and we helped reunite them. It was such a good scavenger hunt.



In other news, teaching in three schools remains a daunting task. I feel like I’m spread too thin and I still have a hard time with all the kids names. But I am working on it. However, I have had some successful moments over the past three months since school has started.
1) This is the one I am most excited about. I have managed to get my teachers one day a month where we can sit down together and plan. English teachers aren’t given any planning time. They teach 8 straight hours a day (minus lunch and recess) and have to plan and grade at home. They all have families, and two of the three teachers I work with go to night class at universities in other towns. As such, it has been a struggle for me to find time to get together with them to plan. Additionally, amongst themselves, the English teachers never have time to share ideas, activities, or materials. They work different schedules and are never in the school at the same time. So, I went down to the regional office and proposed to the Ministry of Public Education wanted a PCV to work with the English teachers in their schools, that we needed time to plan together. So, now, once a month, we can get together for the entire day to lesson plan, bounce ideas around, and practice English. It is great. Our first “teacher work day” was a few weeks ago, and it was a total success. My teachers got to share successful activities and lesson plans with each other for the first time. And we were able to create some really great lesson plans together. It was the beginning of building a teacher network. I left school that day exhausted but so happy that we finally had some time to sit down and work together.

2) Songs. I have yet to bring a song into the classroom that the kids do not go crazy about. We did the hokey pokey for the 5th graders who were going over body parts. They loved it, told everyone at recess about it, and then the 4th and 6th graders wanted us to do the hokey pokey with them, too. They all LOVED they hokey pokey, especially the part when you “turn yourself around.” Every time they were in fits of giggles. In another school we sang a song about the days of the week. It is a simple song with simple lyrics. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders all learned it when they learned days of the week. Now, when I walk around town, the little kids stop me to sing the song to me.

3) Community class. I started a community English class that has been going on for about two months now. I intended the class to be for adults. A lot of the adults in my community had asked me to start up a class, so I wanted to start one for them. The adult attendees pretty immediately dropped out, but most of the younger attendees have stayed. Right now the youngest student is in 4th grade and the oldest is in 12th . I love teaching that class. There is complete freedom in curriculum, I don’t have to co-teach, and all my students want to be there.

IST

I haven’t updated in almost a month. Honestly it is because I haven’t been inspired to write anything. Not that things are going poorly. I think what is happening is that I am starting to feel more like what I am experiencing is actually my life, there is less novelty about it. I am not sure what report back on. I think over the past day, week, month, and can’t come up with anything particular. But, in the spirit of blogging, and on sharing my peace corps experience with everyone back home, I write.

What has been happening?

1) I made it over the three month mark.

This is great news. It means that I made it through what is typically the most emotionally challenging time in my service. It also means that I got to go to San Jose for a two week training. In PC lingo the training is called IST (in service training).

2) IST

The PC put us up in a hotel with hot water, a gym, and a pool. I was shocked at how nice the hotel was considering how much PC Costa Rica’s budget has been cut this year. Apparently we get some crazy discount with the hotel, but still. So I got to have two weeks of AC, hot water, working out, cable TV, a pillow. It was luxurious. I also got to spend two weeks talking with my friends listening to their stories and sharing mine. It was such a relief to discover that all the things that had been frustrating for me (teachers not having time to co-plan, me not having time for non-English projects, school constantly being cancelled, lack of resources) were also issues with other volunteers. It’s not so much that misery loves company – but a realization that my biggest problems weren’t really a reflection of me or my site but were a systematic problem that could be more explained by holes in our project framework coupled with cultural differences.

I also got to learn from my peer’s success stories, and solicit their help/ideas in how I could improve my projects. There is no better/more creative/inspired group of people than my PCV friends. I love bouncing ideas around with them, and seeing what happens. To give a silly example: What to do with 15 mangos.

In Upala it is mango season. It is a glorious time of cheap mangos and howler monkeys on the prowl. The monkeys are always in our mango tree in our backyard, and I like to listen to them bark at each other. But, the other day in Upala, a PCV friend and I were joking about a sign advertising 15 mangos for less than $2.00 (imagine the price after bartering). What would you possibly need 15 mangos for? Then we starting coming up with ideas on how to use 15 mangos:

1) obviously – eat them with your large extended family

2) mango jelly

3) mango chutney

4) mango ice cream

5) mango yogurt (homemade yogurt is apparently easy)

6) mango/coconut curry

7) fruit salad

8) mango milkshake

9) mango juice

10) mango popsicle from leftover mango juice

11) mango pie

12) the list goes on indefinitely

At the end of mango discussion I was left thinking: “what can’t you do with 15 mangos?” Let me know what you would do with 15 ripe delicious local mangos. It is fun to think about. Especially given that most people in the US don’t usually think about how to use excess mangos. The topic of discussion is usually how to best utilize one mango. Mangos are never in season in North Carolina.