Eat mangos while you can

Thanks to everyone for your care and concern about my dad. He had to have emergency surgery, but as of 4pm this afternoon, he is out of the hospital and back at home. He is recovering well, though still feeling kind of cruddy I guess. Please do keep him in your thoughts and send him get well wishes.

To backtrack a bit, this weekend Rob and I celebrated our anniversary by going to a place called Albergue Ecológico (about 6 km away from here) to look at some 3,000 year old petroglyphs. These are rock carvings made by the first inhabitants of Ometepe Island. We took a guided tour (all in Spanish of course), but I wish I would have written some things down because now I don’t remember what all the guide told us.

This one is supposed to be a carving of a monkeyThe circular shapes at the bottom right are a calendar.

Cloudy view of Concepción

Today I was back out in the forest for a long day of watching the North Group. I do like being out in the forest, and of course I love the monkeys, but the mosquitoes, spiders, and rain make it difficult. Not to mention the alarm clock going off at 4:20am. It is seriously hard for me. The only way I’ve been getting by is on mangos. Since about April or May, there has been a constant supply of mangos, and every night before I go out to the forest, I cut up a bunch of mangos and put them in a little container to take out with me the next day. That way, when my alarm clock goes off and all I want to do is stay in bed, I remind myself that I can eat mangos all day long if I just get up and go out to the forest. My love for mangos has become somewhat notorious around here. Most Nicaraguans enjoy eating mangos, but I don’t think any of them has met someone who loves mangos quite as much as I do. The ironic thing is that I’m actually allergic to mangos. Strangely enough, mangos are related to poison ivy, and its not uncommon for people (especially gringos) to get a poison ivy-like rash around their mouth after eating mangos. After much trial and error, I’ve learned that if I cut up the mango and eat it really carefully with a fork—avoiding getting any of the juice on my mouth or lips—I do just fine.

Doña Argentina (one of the cooks) asked me if we had mangos in the US, and I said yes but they are usually very expensive and not nearly as good as mangos in Nicaragua, so I do not eat them very often. She smiled and told me that I would have to eat the mangos here then, while I could. So that’s what I’ve been doing—eating the mangos while I can. Well, today I think my luck finally ran out and mango season has ended. When I was getting my things ready for the forest tomorrow, there were no mangos anywhere in the kitchen. I knew that this would happen some day, so I was not completely unprepared. Its just going to make it that much harder to get up when my alarm goes off at 4:20 in the morning tomorrow. At least it was good while it lasted!

Today while I was out in the forest enjoying what was apparently the last of the season’s mangos, I saw Wilma. If you recall, Wilma is an adult female from the North Group who had a baby back in March that I called Mabel. A couple of months later, I realized that Mabel was actually a boy, but by that point I couldn’t change his name, so I kept on calling him Mabel. Well, today Wilma was alone; there was no Mabel in sight. Mabel would be 4 months old now, and still dependent on Wilma for everything. He might leave her side for a few minutes, but not for an entire day. The situation doesn’t look good for Mabel. I keep hoping that I was mistaken; that it wasn’t really Wilma who I saw, and that I’ll find Mabel alive and well tomorrow. But somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen. It looks like another infant from the North Group has died. In the past year, there have been 6 births in the North Group; with Mabel gone missing now, that makes 4 of them who have died or disappeared. All that are left are Stacy (7 months) and Toby (2 months), so I’m really hoping they make it.

That’s all for now; I’ve got to get some sleep. Getting up at 4:20 in the morning is going to be awfully tough, knowing that it will be a day without mangos. Thanks for reading.