Mango Heat

I am at the point in my service term where life is normal. My first months in Chad were filled with strange sights, smells, and tastes. Now, sharing the road with goats and pigs is normal, the B.O. of 1000 people crammed in church doesn’t faze me, and I actually enjoyed my boule with slimy okra sauce today (shocking, I know). I know my students’ names and where to buy credit for my telephone. I get my mango smoothie at Sumara and my Arabic shampoo at Azala. I know it should cost me 250 cfa to get to Rebecca’s house, although the clando driver will try to make me pay 300 cfa. While I am still learning loads every day, I no longer feel like I’m floundering in Chadian culture.

I haven’t written home in a while because nothing seems incredibly exciting – no one has tried to steal anything from Mama Routour recently (a smart choice). However, there are two things that have been constantly on my mind since mid-March. Heat and mangoes.

Let’s start with heat. It is hot. Really hot. I know my father is laughing at my situation because I constantly complain about the cold South Dakotan weather, but this heat is something else entirely. Ever constant, temperatures are around 110 degrees in Moundou and worse in N’djamena. Some of you may be thinking, “Why Kelsey, that isn’t so bad. Sounds like Kansas.” Yes, I have experienced Kansas heat and it is also bad, but here is the difference…

I cannot escape this heat. I can’t hop into my Honda fit and turn on the AC, or enter a grocery store for relief. As I have mentioned every time I blog (sorry), there usually isn’t electricity. I can’t go inside to cool down. In fact, going inside is sometimes worse. Everything here is made of brick which heats up during the day and retains that temperature for long after the sun sets. This has made sleeping a nightmare (haha, nightmare. Get it?) My body has become accustomed to sweating like a disgusting pig during the day, but sleep is impossible for everyone when it is 100 degrees in your room. I’ve taken to sleeping with damp clothes or a soaking towel, which feels like putting on a wet swimsuit, but keeps my skin from melting off my body into my sheets. The other heat prison is the classroom. It is hard to look like a professional with sweat running down your face. “You do hot, Miss Kels?” Yes, I do hot.

Thankfully, I am not the only one who feels like this. For some reason I came to Africa believing that the Chadians wouldn’t feel heat like I do. They do feel it and sympathize. Most Chadians sleep outside at night, although I’ve had enough malaria to fear the outdoors after dark, and it is normal to take a bucket shower a few times a day. And there is a wonderful invention called a hand fan that one can utilize when death by heat seems imminent. My host mother gave me a fan the size of a small baking pan and every color of the rainbow. It has probably saved my life. I have a new appreciation for sweat after God sends a breeze or I enthusiastically use my hand fan. Sweat really cools down your body when there is any kind of air movement. Ingenious.

As I have been overly dramatic about the Chadian climate, I have to praise an aspect of Moundou that has been as present as the heat. Mangoes. Thousands of them. Millions. I’m in a hot heaven of succulent fruit.

Before I got to Africa, I was told that Moundou was the mango capitol of the world. I thought the title was just a way to get a SALTer into the blistering heat of Chad, but there is truth to it. Mango trees grow tall and thick for miles around Moundou. They offer cool shade and produce mountains of fruit that dangle from long stems like tinsel on a Christmas tree. I hadn’t really thought about how a mango grew until I saw the three mango trees in our yard start to produce little lima bean-shaped buds at the end of a long strings. How neat!

Mangoes are everywhere. It is rare to see a child walk by without a mango pit in their little hands. The kids were eating green mangoes in January already, but now when the petites enfants come to shake my hand at school, I leave with ripe, mango stickiness on my palms. Mango pits litter the ground around school and on the streets of Moundou. Women carry basins piled full of mangoes on their heads and children sell artistically stacked mounds of fruit on little tables next to the roads. My host father disappeared one day to go to the “field” and came back with a cart brimming with mangoes. That night I sat on the side of the road with my host mother and sister, surrounded by mangoes for sale – 3 for 20 US cents. There wasn’t electricity that evening so we had an oil lamp to illuminate our produce, as did the family selling mangoes 20 feet to our left. And there was another mango table and lamp across the street from them. And another a little father on. It felt a little bit like Christmas - a string of warm lights trailing down the road. Orion’s belt was clear in the stars, there was a slight breeze, and I had mango juice trickling down my arms. I felt contentedly at home.

This morning I accompanied my host father to his mango grove. I climbed a mango tree, selected my fruit, and ate it. That sounds simple but it was on my Chadian Bucket list so I was giddy about it for a while. And as we picked and sorted baskets of mangoes, we sweated away. There is always something to complain about (and I really do complain about the heat), but there is always something to be thankful for as well. I may sound like a broken record, but this experience has taught me something about little blessings. They are numerous and unceasing.

My cup overflows…with mangoes.

Artistically shot photo by my fellow teacher, Emile. The baby to my left is Samuel. He also enjoys mangoes.