After 6 months of dryness, heat, and dust, the rainy season has finally started. It more or less started on May 15th, the day which Guineans correctly predicted it would, which is kind of amazing. I can't even desribe the first rain - the smell of fresh rain and the cool wind that came with it after months of stifling heat was just incredible. Within days after the first rain grass sprouted from everywhere ( I mean everywhere) and the brown landscape completely transformed into a green paradise.
Along with the rainy season also comes the planting season. My family has a peanut farm out in another village, a village appropriately called Kansitah (literal translation: the place of peanuts). At home we've been cracking peanut shells open to get the peanut which is the part that is planted. People take turns sitting on the porch opening thousands and thousands of peanuts.
Cracking open peanuts
We're also deep into mango season. You would be surprised how many ways you can eat a mango. Raw, boiled with sugar, pureed with sweet potato and spices, made into sauce and eaten with rice, mango jam...
How to acquire a mango: Buy one, pick one up off the ground, climb a tree and knock one off, wait for a storm to knock them off, take a giant stick of bamboo and hit the branches of a mango tree, wait for your students to bring you a sack full, etc...
My brother Moussa in a mango tree with a bamboo stick hitting mangoes off and my sister Bobo going around and collecting them
Happy mango season!
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