Mangies Galore

Today I went mango picking with my sisters, Matt, Gil, Pedro P and Pedro P’s mama and brother. Originally I thought it was just going to be a little hike down into the valley to find Pedro P’s grandma’s mango trees. However, the trees turned out to be in the next valley over, so we descended into the valley below Achada Liton, climbed up the next mountain and then slid about half-way down the other side of that mountain to a little grove of mango trees. It was an exhausting, rocky and hot-as-hell hike, but the view was terrific! We could see all the way from Achada Igreja to our houses in Achada Liton Baixo. To get the mangos off the tree, we had to climb up the tree, jump on the branches and then let the mangos roll down the hill to where we could collect them. The mangos were delicious!! You could taste the freshness. It was a good reward after a long hike. At the top of the second hill there was a house that we stopped to rest at. It was incredibly hard to get to and I can’t even imagine how or who built it. It was an older woman living there and her son who was “dodu na cabeza” (crazy). He had been yelling at us as we were picking mangos and while we were resting he kept walking over toward us with rocks in his hand like he was going to throw them at us. Luckily, all of our little siblings are fearless and they all picked up sticks and were waving them at him and yelling for him to get away. He yelled back, threw a few harmless rocks and proceeded to pull down his pants. It was a very interesting situation. We continued back to our village – this time carrying about 30 lbs of mangos. My sister, Nuka and Pedro P’s mom carried them on their heads. It was the most impressive thing I have ever seen. Here we are slipping and sliding down this mountain in our hiking shoes and then Nuka is following us with 15 lbs of mangos on her head while wearing flip flops.