Mango Madness

I like a good mango as much as the next person.

But I'll confess I'm tired of mango season.

Very large, tall mango trees + lots of mangoes = loud thuds every few minutes day and night.

Then there are the ones that cause the heart stopping BANGS when they hit the tin roofs.

Cory likes to eat a few with each meal, up to about 12 a day.

Many of the children and some adults live on mangoes when they are in season. Cory asked how many they eat per day. Our gardener said that just that morning he was with a man in the hills who ate 50-I'll bet he regretted it later. Mango fiber has a laxative effect when you reach your limit.

Good vitamins, good tasting. People are collecting buckets off the compound and there are still some for the chickens and dogs. Truckloads are shipped to the cities but transport is expensive.

We plan to bring some to LaGonave next week. As said in our update-Cory has tried 17 different types, some are better than others. He is afraid that next week he will go through withdrawal.

Where the hospital and mission is located on LaGonave is too close to the sea to be able to grow mangos.

We are thankful for a healthy CHEAP food that doesn't need cooking which means no charcoal is burned. Food prices continue to be a big issue in Haiti. I read yesterday that food prices in the USA had jumped 5%. Haiti's estimate is that food prices have jumped between 70-100% since the beginning of the year. One of the reasons is that Haitians mainly purchase the basic commodities for food: rice, beans, sugar, corn meal, and other grains sold by merchants out of 100 pound sacks. Hard times considering that the first part of the year the average Haitian was already spending 80% of their income on food.