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MI Mango loving family, a must read
Mango charity, industry and hospitality needed
Paul H. Williams, Hospitality Jamaica Writer
"Mek we go a mango walk, mango time/For is only di talk mango time/Mek wi jump pon di big jackass/Run im dung an no tap a pass/Mek di best a di crop, mango time," is a verse from a popular Jamaican folk song, Mango Time.
Every time I hear that song, memories of aspects of my childhood days flow like nectar in my mind. My friends and I used to steal away in the evenings after school to 'go look' mangoes because the mango walk was nowhere near our home. In the early summer days, we were, however, free to roam, and the mangoes we got, we would take back home.
That mango walk is no more; houses have replaced the trees. And whenever I see trees laden with ripe mangoes, I reflect on the last line of the verse I mentioned above: "Mek di best a di crop, mango time."
This reflection is motivated by the sight of hundreds of unwanted mangoes that I see in middle-class St Andrew communities, and other communities all over the country, every mango season.
I have been to rural places where there is enough 'mango fi stone dog', to use a local idiom, strewn about yards, along roads, and in bushes. In the upper St Andrew communities though, the mangoes that go to waste annually are the ostentatious varieties - East Indian, Julie, Bombay, etc.
The ones that are not so 'elite' are also among the wastage. Every year they fall to the ground, stay there and rot. And then they are thrown into the garbage receptacles at gates to be removed.
wastage a sore point
Every time I see the waste, I think about the many children's homes in Jamaica to which the owners of these trees could take the mangoes that they obviously don't want (or which they alone cannot eat). This wastage is a sore point with me, seriously. There has to be another way to dispose of these mangoes. Give them to people who want them, even organise a huge mango sale, festival or a mango feast.
A mango feast took place in my yard in St James when I was growing up. My father would go to a place called Johns Hall, way in the hills. And he would return with baskets of number eleven mangoes, which we would share with our neighbours. We all would sit and eat mangoes until we were cloy. Until this day, the scent of number eleven mangoes is still etched in my brain.
And strange enough, number eleven is not my favourite. It's robin, which I could not get enough of. There was only one tree that I ever saw and it was owned by a woman whose husband and children my family called 'cousins'. But that woman, may her soul rest in peace, was not so generous with her robin mangoes. So peeved I was with her stinginess that I mentioned the robin mangoes in her eulogy, which I read.
Another of my favourite is turpentine, which the Mango Time song also mentions, but I have not seen turpentine mangoes in ages ... I would eat some now. And now is the time for the building of a big mango industry. We have the mangoes going to waste and we have the man and woman-power. Why are we saying times are hard when we have enough mangoes to process, export, and sell locally? It's mango time, mek di best a di crop!
Paul H. Williams, Hospitality Jamaica Writer
"Mek we go a mango walk, mango time/For is only di talk mango time/Mek wi jump pon di big jackass/Run im dung an no tap a pass/Mek di best a di crop, mango time," is a verse from a popular Jamaican folk song, Mango Time.
Every time I hear that song, memories of aspects of my childhood days flow like nectar in my mind. My friends and I used to steal away in the evenings after school to 'go look' mangoes because the mango walk was nowhere near our home. In the early summer days, we were, however, free to roam, and the mangoes we got, we would take back home.
That mango walk is no more; houses have replaced the trees. And whenever I see trees laden with ripe mangoes, I reflect on the last line of the verse I mentioned above: "Mek di best a di crop, mango time."
This reflection is motivated by the sight of hundreds of unwanted mangoes that I see in middle-class St Andrew communities, and other communities all over the country, every mango season.
I have been to rural places where there is enough 'mango fi stone dog', to use a local idiom, strewn about yards, along roads, and in bushes. In the upper St Andrew communities though, the mangoes that go to waste annually are the ostentatious varieties - East Indian, Julie, Bombay, etc.
The ones that are not so 'elite' are also among the wastage. Every year they fall to the ground, stay there and rot. And then they are thrown into the garbage receptacles at gates to be removed.
wastage a sore point
Every time I see the waste, I think about the many children's homes in Jamaica to which the owners of these trees could take the mangoes that they obviously don't want (or which they alone cannot eat). This wastage is a sore point with me, seriously. There has to be another way to dispose of these mangoes. Give them to people who want them, even organise a huge mango sale, festival or a mango feast.
A mango feast took place in my yard in St James when I was growing up. My father would go to a place called Johns Hall, way in the hills. And he would return with baskets of number eleven mangoes, which we would share with our neighbours. We all would sit and eat mangoes until we were cloy. Until this day, the scent of number eleven mangoes is still etched in my brain.
And strange enough, number eleven is not my favourite. It's robin, which I could not get enough of. There was only one tree that I ever saw and it was owned by a woman whose husband and children my family called 'cousins'. But that woman, may her soul rest in peace, was not so generous with her robin mangoes. So peeved I was with her stinginess that I mentioned the robin mangoes in her eulogy, which I read.
Another of my favourite is turpentine, which the Mango Time song also mentions, but I have not seen turpentine mangoes in ages ... I would eat some now. And now is the time for the building of a big mango industry. We have the mangoes going to waste and we have the man and woman-power. Why are we saying times are hard when we have enough mangoes to process, export, and sell locally? It's mango time, mek di best a di crop!