Mango guts, melon cores and chunky Mamba thighs

Posing with the fruit purchases... so happy!

Mangos smell rich and womanly under their soft yellow skins, sweet and steamy and damp like fresh mountain rain. Their perfume mesmerized me as I zigzagged through Montrouis’ open market, skirts swishing as women bargained and young boys begged, their hands held open like empty prayers.

After dulling my palate with two weeks of rice, pasta and white bread, the flavor almost choked me. There’s something embarrassingly sensual about biting into a mango, tearing the skin with your teeth. Juices dripped down my chin, and I felt like a child. Or a vampire, sucking zealously on raw flesh.

The texture of a mango is similar to a fine pâté once you get past the stringy bits near the skin. The hard core is a palm-sized heart, emerging from the goopy fruit almost alive, like the trembling meat in an oyster shell. I saw children sucking on the mango hearts like lollypops, leaving the cores smooth and brown.

I had never peeled a mango before, and some of the younger Canaan girls laughed as my fingers clumsily stripped the fruit to keep the precious orange heartstrings intact. The 12-year-old, Marceline, took the mango from me and stripped it meticulously with a knife, peeling it like a sweet potato. Under the swaying tungsten kitchen lights, the naked mango looked and felt like a slimy fist of raw chicken.

Our purchases from the market, minus a couple of mangos we couldn't wait to devour.

Caroline, the full-time director of the Medika Mamba malnutrition program in Montrouis arrived back at Canaan this week from a month-long hiatus. She picked up Creole after only four months mission work thanks to her background in French. I would have been lost without her navigation through the Montrouis fruit venders.

The key, Caroline said, was to play the vendors against one another and let them compete for business. We drove the Mamba truck to the middle of Montrouis to exchange USD for goudes. A bare-chested Haitian man lazily flicked at flies as he did the transaction: 800 goudes for $20 (40 goudes for every dollar).

The market starts on the curb of the winding highway of down-town Montrouis and extends a hair's length from honking tap taps or gestures of high-speed passers-by, filling the market with a stench of diesel. Haiti's Rte 1 cuts through the market's bustle, while a tangle of merchants with massive bowls or cracked tupperware aggressively wander like auctioneers. The more relaxed of the vendors sit under lopsided shelters, displaying everything from glass-bottled beverages to raw meat dizzy with flies.

As soon as we had money, women with huge bowls of melons, avocados, limes, mangos and spiky green and brown fruits I’ve never seen before swamped us. Unable to negotiate in the chaos, with fruits thrust under our noses and rubbed against our skin amid yells of “bon bagay!” (meaning, “good thing!” in Creole), we climbed in the truck and rolled down one of the windows. Caroline bargained ruthlessly, chastising the women as they advertised their wares at twice the street value to us blancs.

When we finally agreed on a fair price, the rapidly truck filled with fruit:

For $5 (US), we bought 13 plump, healthy avocados, picked that morning just miles down the road.

For $1, a handful of fragrant limes. For $2.50 a piece, two swollen and aromatic melons.

For $5, a bucket of mangos, warm from the afternoon sun, that made us drunk and salivating from sweetness.

Total price: $16 US, and we watched as two of the women strutted back home, finally selling all their goods after a long day at the market.

Caroline, Amy, Robin and I devoured the fruit, speaking only with “mmm”s and “ahhh”s.

The avocados need a few days to ripen, but with some garlic, lime juice, salt and pepper, we plan to make guacamole to eat on chips that a missionary team is bringing for us Saturday, per Caroline’s request. We prepared a fruit salad with the mangos and melon, juices marrying in a ceramic mixing bowl and nestled in one of Canaan’s industrial-sized refrigerators. I hope we can stretch it out over all our meals tomorrow, but we put such a dent in the mangos we might be back at market tomorrow.

Today was incredibly fulfilling, in addition to belly-filling. Canaan operates on routine, and I’ve fallen into the predictable cadence as I start my third week in Haiti. Wednesday means Medika Mamba at Rousseau, the rural hospital in the mountains. 

We had quite a few babies graduate from the peanut-butter based malnutrition program today at Rousseau, and Montrouis Tuesday. I love seeing emaciated babies transformed into giggling bundles of meaty arms and chunky thighs. We document these transformations with photographs, and the difference is astounding.

Graduation from the Medika Mamba program is the difference between shriveled, stunted bodies and those healthy rolls that make me smile. It’s death conquered by vitamins, protein and crucial calories.

Women and babies line up for Mamba assessments at Rousseau Hospital.

Twins get undressed to be weighed and examined.

I am exhausted, though. Caroline led us on a 2-hour hike into the mountains. My sweat glands were on overdrive as we climbed the steep rocky path. Like most afternoons, the air felt smarmy and damp and made my glasses slip incessantly down my nose. Out of nowhere, the mountains in the northeast echoed with thunder, and my sweat mingled with dense raindrops.

It’s so peaceful here, watching lightning blaze in the mountains while the coast is serene, untouched blue.