some thoughts on mangoes.

Beloved,

Summertime is well underway at the Farm of the Child. It means kids riding bikes around the campo until dinner in a way that reminds me of my own lazy childhood summers, coming inside reluctantly only when their house parents call “A comer! Time to eat!” It means that God splatters paint on the sky nightly with some of the most ridiculously beautiful sunsets you’ve ever seen – best enjoyed while swimming with a child, or two, or ten. It means volunteers coming and going on vacation, and lots of wonderful visitors, and that the percussion of our nightly prayer is the rhythmical slapping of mosquitoes feasting on sweet-blooded legs, and that we start sweating before we even get out of bed in the morning. But among all these things there is to love about a Honduran summer, there might be one I love most of all – the arrival of mango season.

A few weeks ago, Jessica and Zulena, two of my fifth graders, showed up to school with plastic bags in tow. “Tenga, Profa!” They commanded. “Here – it’s for you!” Peeking inside, I decided that my job has some definite pay-offs – the bags were filled with sweet, ripe mangoes, gathered from the girls’ houses, so many of them I had to give them away before they rotted. (To let a sweet mango go bad – a sin!) Yes, mango season is in full swing, and even if you’re not lucky enough to be under the mango tree when a freshly-ripe one decides to fall, all you need to do is hand the nearest child a big stick and she’ll be more than happy to give it a good throw and get one down for you. Mango season reminds me that we are of the earth, connected to it in such a deep and intimate way that, as an old volunteer put it, we “literally cannot scrub it out of our skin.” It is one of the things I love most about the Farm… that I go to bed at night with dirt still beneath my fingernails, no matter how long I spend washing my hands, that a few minutes standing in the salty water of the Caribbean is the best natural remedy to soothe my mosquito-bitten legs. I wash my clothes in the morning on days when I think the sun can dry them by noon, and gathering firewood that's still slightly damp instead of the good, light kind can mean that dinner might be on the table a little bit later than usual. On a morning that our egg rations had run out for the week, fellow volunteer Keenan got up a little early and ransacked the hen houses so that we’d have some protein on the table for breakfast. And when the power goes out, we put our office work and our lesson plans on hold and enjoy the excuse to sit together and laugh by the light of a few flickering candles. Yes… we live on, with and from the earth, and we cannot be separated from it.

This grounding connection with the earth, these changing seasons, they remind me that time is passing here, that our kids, and myself too, are moving and changing and growing, although it’s not always easy to see in the midst of the dailyness of it all. I see this change in the smallest of ways. For example, Brayan, the Farm’s newest child, has finally learned my name after about a month of calling me “Sara.” (She’s a good six inches taller than me, but we both have glasses… I might be confused if I were seven, too.) Many of my most grace-filled moments this summer have been spent watching him learn to read as he follows along in the song books at church, with his patient first-grade teacher Ryan perpetually and faithfully by his side. After completing the mandatory 6-month waiting period, I’ve taken to the mountain roads in one of the Finca’s Landcruisers as I’ve begun stickshift driving lessons. Watch out, Trujillo! My 6th grade boys now follow up their “Profa, venga!” (Teacher, come here!”) with “por favor” a good 50% of the time without me having to shoot them a loving glance of a reminder that in my classroom, “please” and “thank you” are required. And, wonder of wonders…. Jessica has finally (sort of) learned long division. Day in and day out, they’re not necessarily huge or romantic signs that I’m really “doing” much of anything here. But I am coming to see that there is beauty in the smallness of it all, that I guess it is, as Dorothy Day says, “by little and by little” that we are saved.

The best way to eat a mango – a really good, sticky, sweet, soft mango – is to sink your teeth into its skin, rip away the outsides and literally suck the flesh and juice out of the middle. So I’m putting away my knife and my plate, and the temptation to cut my mango into neat little pieces and politely enjoy it without making a mess, because there’s just something about the experience of really digging in that makes it… I don’t know, more meaningful. And it’s like that with my time at the Farm, too. It’s tempting to try to cut it into neat, clean pieces, to digest it easily and come out with clean hands. But eating mangoes isn’t like that. When you finish eating a good mango, your shirt might be a little stained, and your hands will be sticky, and you’ll definitely need a good floss… but there’s a certain richness in the experience, there’s joy in the journey, and there’s a sweetness in it all. Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t get a sour bite every once in a while, too. :)

To all of you who so generously offered me your time and welcomed me back into your lives and your hearts during my vacation back to the States in May, thank you. I can tell you with so much honesty that it was exactly the re-charge I needed to come back to the Farm more ready to be here, more alive and myself and really at home. To my amazing friends who made the journey to come and experience this place for yourselves in early June, thank you for your love and your energy and for helping me to see this place, and myself here, with new eyes. For anyone that is thinking of coming to visit, please do!!! On a final note, although I have reached my personal fundraising goal, the Farm is always in need of general funds, and I have a few special personal projects I am actively seeking donations for. If you have interest in continuing to support my work financially, please send me an email and I would be happy to offer some suggestions of ways to help.

As always, thank you for your love, your generosity, and for sharing in all that goes on here at the Farm. Know that you are always in my prayers and my heart. May the joy and the messiness of mango season be yours, too, no matter how far away you are.

with sticky hands and a joyful heart,
Erin