The Tango of the Mango

Mangos, the messiest fruit you'll ever love.

Most PCV's develope an allergy to mangos after living in Malawi. Why you may ask? Because since food is seasonal, we stuff our faces with mangos when they are in season, ripping them open with our teth just like the natives. I've even seen PCV's chew on the skin, just like the Malawians. We expose ourselves to so much of the toxins in the skin of the mango and overdose on large quantities of the fruit. Therefore, we develop allergies. The same goes for peanuts/peanut butter.

But Back to Mangos.

Truly, there is no better tasting yet wholly annoying fruit on the planet. If you eat them like a native (When they are more sour and green, unripe basically) its not as bad, but if you wait for them to be ripe, its a blessing and curse.

Imagine eating a mango so ripe the color of the flesh, when you pull back the molted green and yellow skin, is neon orange. It is so juicy that as you eat it, it coats your hands, drips down your arms in such a steady stream it drips onto your feet and the floor. Your mouth and chin are soaked in the sweet juice and unless you bend forward, it drips down and coats your shirts in a tell-tale orange stain.

You spend longer than you should trying to ripe off the stubborn pulp from the pit becuase it seems like such a waste of flavor and color to leave it. You ignore the hundreds of threads of pulp between your teeth becuase its pointless to attempt extraction until you finish and give up hope of getting any more pulp off the pit...or it squirts out of your hands like a slippery fish and you make an audible 'AW!' noise and stare forloarnly at the wasted mango laying in the dirt.

Then spend the next hour picking at the pulp in your teeth, and find stubborn, hidden strands the next day. It takes a bucket of water to clean your hands, hell you might as well take a bath....nah.

Worth it?

Of course