Mango Season

my house and mango trees

All of the expats in a given area have a way of finding each other here. At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s easier to pick out someone who probably wasn’t born in Cameroon. This means that in addition to my volunteer friends, I’ve also become acquaintances with scholars, entrepreneurs, and missionaries. And so, an American agnostic became friends with a German Christian missionary.

Jessica and the other missionaries in her group work as primary school teachers in a small village just outside of Ngaoundéré, the regional capital of the Adamawa. They live in sort of dormitory near the school, with a common room, a small kitchen, and a bedroom with a few bunk beds. I don’t speak any German, but Jessica speaks fluent English, and when I saw a handwritten sign in German in her dormitory, I asked her to translate.

“It says, ‘Mango season starts in March.’”

We laughed. She knew no French when she arrived in Cameroon, but at least she knew when mango season was.

At least, in theory. The chill of January and February led into a hot, dusty March. Everything was covered in a fine orange dust, but there was still no sign of rain, and no sign of mangoes. It’s normal, people told me. We had an exceptional crop last year, so there won’t be very many this year. Having arrived at post just after the end of last year’s mango season, I was slightly bitter.

Then, slowly, they began to appear. During the preparations for Women’s Day in early March I would see the occasional youth selling bundles of mangoes for exorbitant prices, up to 100 francs (about 20 cents) for a single fruit. Not surprisingly, there weren’t many buyers; for that amount of money, you could buy an entire baguette.

As the weeks passed, I looked mournfully out my front door at the two ancient mango trees in my yard. Nothing.

Finally, one day while walking home from the market, I looked up at the mango trees, and it seemed like the yellow fruits were glowing in the light of the sunset. There weren’t many, and they weren’t yet bright red and ripe, but finally, there was the promise of mangoes.

Since then, Nyambaka has been inundated with large juicy mangoes, and as a result, prices have plummeted. (The best price I’ve paid thus far was 50 francs, or about ten cents, for half a dozen of them.) Of course, the locals mocked me for paying for them at all: Why not just climb a tree and get them yourself? I told myself that I wanted to help the children make a little money, but mostly I wanted to spare myself the embarrassment of falling from a tree with my skirt up over my head.


Now that the season is in full swing, the mango trees just outside my yard are beginning to bear fruit at a level that I can actually reach. The first time I picked one myself, I ran home, rinsed it off, peeled off the thick green-yellow-red skin, and greedily gobbled it up, even sucking on the pit to get every last drop of juice. At the end of it, I looked like one of the small children I sometimes see eating mangoes in village: face covered in juice, hands sticky stained somewhat orange, pieces of fruit debris on their clothes. I was an absolute mess, but a satisfied mess.

"At last, my mangoes have come along...."