The Art of Eating a Mango

Most fruits don’t require instructions or advice. Most fruits don’t need technique and strategy.  But the mango isn’t most fruits.  Having never eaten a mango from its raw state before coming to Ethiopia, I know I will always associate mangos with this time in my life.  I can picture it now, nostalgically strolling through the produce department at an oversized grocery store in America.  Before Ethiopia I probably couldn’t have picked out a mango from a pile of fruit.  But now I consider myself an expert.

Mango season has rolled into town once again; right after the small peaches and right before the big rainy season.  Everything here is measured by produce and weather it seems.  As soon as the mangos make their way from the southern parts of the country where they are grown in abundance, the price begins to drop and you can’t walk three steps without having to dodge a mango pit on the streets.

Eating a mango (unless it’s cut, cleaned, and awaiting you in a plastic container in America) is typically a messy process.  It can range anywhere from a necessary hand-washing to necessary bath and a good ol’ flossing.  This makes it an awkward fruit to simply hand to someone as a snack when they are sitting in your house.  But in Ethiopia, it’s cultural to share what you have, and equally cultural to eat mangoes without cutlery.

The Ethiopian method comes in two forms: ripe and past ripe.  When the mango is ripened, people simply bite off sections of the skin to peel it and then eat the rest like an apple, except messier.  This requires a decent hand-washing and face-washing usually.  If the mango is past ripe (squishy) they bite off an end and just squeeze the juice and innards into their mouth.

The problem with the mango is that there is no place to hold the mango.  The first half is easy: peel and eat.  But the second half is where true innovation comes into play.  And by “innovation” I mean “messiness.”  As you start to peel the second half, it becomes necessary to try to hold onto the slippery pit, which is where the mess begins.

I’ve come to enjoy the messiness, and I’ve embraced the necessary post-mango-eating clean-up, which is a small price to pay for sweet, fresh mango.