Moving Boxes

I’ve been at this new job around a month now. I’m still without a home, living out of a suitcase and jumping from place to place- South Africa, meetings in Mozambique, partner visits in Leshotho, Seed meetings in Joburg, an agriculture conference in Harare… But this week I will finally move to Zimbabwe. I am feeling a bit anxious about moving to Bulawayo. It doesn’t matter how many times I move, starting from scratch in a new home and new country is a daunting prospect.

It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, people (including me) have a tendency to put others in a box they understand until they get to know and understand who you are. When that box is “white missionary” you’ve got some work to do. There is such a complicated history behind those two words. How do you begin to build your own identity? To be accepted and known for who you are as a person? I do my best to break people’s expectations, to varying success. I don’t wear “missionary skirts” and I keep my many heels and sparkly shoes clean and washed. But does any distinction I feel in my mind make a difference at all in the face of the realities of Southern Africa?

I talk with people from the city and they make some comment how I must be suffering because there is no AC in the room. They don’t know I’ve spent a three years living in rural places, no electricity, no fridge, no running water, hand-washing my laundry…  Do I set the record straight every time? Or do I just suck it up- is living with those assumptions the price of the history I carry on the surface of my skin? The price of a life of privilege. 

I’m moving to Bulawayo together with my female colleague who is from Lesotho. Despite my outward appearance I am terrified of the idea of moving again. My colleague is fun and outgoing and in 3 days she’ll probably have made 10 friends who are all cooler than me! In three days I’ll probably be alone in my apartment with a cup of tea, wishing I at least had my cat to keep my company.

This song by Audrey Assad reads like a poem, a prayer, and a heartfelt cry.

   From the love of my own comfort

From the fear of having nothing

From a life of wordly passion

Deliver me o God

   From a need to be understood

From a need to be accepted

From the fear of being lonely

Deliver me o God

   From the fear of serving others

From the fear of death or trial

From the fear of humility

Deliver me o God

   And I shall not want

No I shall not want

When I taste your goodness

I shall not want

When I taste your goodness

I shall not want.

Ode to a Mango

Ten Different Ways to Eat a Mango

       I’m back in the blogging world once more dear friends, this time on the way to Zimbabwe, though I’ve only made it as far as South Africa at this time. Since I’m no longer in Machanga I’ve had to change the title of my blog once again. I thought I'd give "migration of the chickadee" a try for now… at least it is not geographically tied and sums up my current mobile state. 

       As of January 21st I have officially started my job as co-facilitator for MCC’s Southern Africa Seed program, a 2-year volunteer exchange program for young adults in the Southern Africa region, revolving around the theme of food sovereignty and conservation agriculture. But I’ll write more about that another day. It being a new job there are still too many unsolved details at this point (such as when I’ll actually move to Bulawayo and where I will be living once I get there), that I might as well wait a couple more weeks to be able to paint a fuller picture of my new life.

       So today I’ll stick to a safer subject matter, something I DO know about. Mangoes. I love mangoes. Fresh of a tree in your backyard. Juice up to your elbows. Like nothing you have every eaten before.

       Often during my travels people ask what the climate in Canada is like. I oblige them with terrifying stories of lakes frozen solid, snow up to the eyeballs, cold that beats the coldest deep-freeze you’ve ever stuck your hand inside. Then I tell them it is so cold in winter that we can’t grow mango trees. They stare at me in disbelief. No mango trees? Nope. And no papaya trees, guava trees, coconut, sugar cane, avocado, banana, jackfruit, custard apple, passion fruit… 

       When asked what I like most about living in Cambodia or Mozambique, mangos are always up there at the top. It is a fruit that must be experienced in its natural habitat. Much as a mackintosh apple picked from the orchard on a crisp New Brunswick fall day, for the proper mango eating experience you must be sitting beneath a coconut palm, the mango still warm from sun it was basking in when you pulled it from the tree not moments before. If Solomon lived in the tropics, the songs he wrote would have had a lot more mangos and a lot fewer goats.

       I used to think that mangos were just mangos. But during the course of my travels I’ve learned that the mango is a versitile and beautiful thing.

1. Eat them green (just before they are ripe, a hint of yellow in the flesh, a little crunchy and a little sour but amazingly delicious) with salt and chili pepper. 

 2. Eat big ones, small ones, red ones, yellow ones, green ones, purple ones.

 

3. Peel the very green ones and cook them in a pot until they resemble applesauce. Add some maize flour and sugar and make a porridge for breakfast.

 4. Try a potato peeler for a thin slice while still a bit green.

 

5. Eat them as a salad over grilled fish.

 6. Eat them on the side of the road sold like THIS.

 

7. Eat them in a fruit salad or a smoothie or baked oatmeal.

 

8. Eat them ripe off the tree cut in wedges.

 

9. Eat them scored in squares and turned inside out (my favourite).

 

10. Or just dig in with your teeth and spit out the peel.