And you thought mango season was over...

I'm at the computer, typing this sentence this very instant! Tomorrow morning I'm going back to site, inshallah (because you never know if you'll be abducted by aliens or something). I would write more about what I've been up to during my week in the Kombos, but it was mostly lots of American rushing around alternated with American lying around doing nothing. Which was fun for me, but not particularly fascinating reading material.

My favorite part of the week has probably been the past three days, when I went with the new trainees (just a week old!) to introduce them to the training village where they'll be staying for the next two months. I went with the three new Fulas to my old training village, where I hadn't been since my visit in December.

 My family's got a generator now, and a light above their porch! And Hawa (who I hadn't seen since August) has a baby (who hadn't yet been born in August)! And the bean sandwiches aren't topped with spaghetti! And I got to be a fount of knowledge!

And: there were mangoes.

Even though The Gambia's an itty bitty country, it's large enough that the end of mango season at one end of the country is the start of mango season at the other. In honor of these last mango bites I enjoyed, here is my mango identification guide.

A Super-Scientific Guide to Mangoes of The Gambia:

Mango Mangoes: The mangoes that used to fall into my backyard. These mangoes were the size, shape, texture-- and if they ripened in the sun, also the color-- of a mango I might find at Super Stop and Shop.

Icee Mangoes: You can squish and slurp these small and squiggly mangoes like an icee.

Basse Mangoes: These are the only kind of mangoes I've ever seen for sale in Basse. They are round, medium-sized, solid orange and have a smooth, creamy texture.

Sour Gummi Bear Mangoes: These mangoes were the last to ripen in our compound. Neene doesn’t like them because they’re too sour, and I don’t like them because they’ve got the weirdest texture I’ve ever encountered in a fruit, but they were better than nothing and at least they're still around.

Smoothie Mangoes: My former training village family handed me one of these two days ago. It's large with a particularly flat pit and has the flavor of a mango smoothie YUM.

Purple mangoes: OMG. They're real. I've never tasted one, but they're purple beyond belief.