The Papaya Club

I had never eaten fresh papaya until we moved to West Africa. Dried and coated with lots of sugar, sure, but fresh? How do you cut it? How do you eat it? Can you cook it? I am learning the many uses of this versatile fruit, but I'm not sure it would fall in my top ten list of favorites.

We have two papaya trees in our yard, and it seems at times that the season for this fruit is never ending--there are always papayas on those trees! It's not that we don't ever eat them; we do. And we've even made pickles, apple pie, and cole slaw out of unripe papaya. But even still, those persistant things keep producing more than we can consume, not to mention the fact that they hang about fifteen feet off of the ground.

A few weeks ago, some neighborhood kids got brave. Maybe the group that showed up lost some game they were playing, and as the losers, had to go knock on the foreigner's gate. Maybe they were just really drawn to that juicy, ripe fruit. Whatever the case, three very nervous kids showed up one Monday afternoon and didn't really know what to say.

Their french is limited, because they haven't been in school very long. My Kono is limited, because...well, because it doesn't make sense to my brain yet. But pointing goes a long way, and soon I realized that they wanted papaya. I was worried about how to retrieve the fruit, but the tallest girl just marched up to the tree, took off her sandals, and started to climb. Her calloused feet help her to grip the trunk of the tree and propel her body upwards. In no time at all, she had climbed high enough to put one foot gingerly in between the pieces of broken glass on top of the wall, and from there she could stretch and reach the fruit.

We've developed sort of pattern, this little papaya club and I. When they see the fruit turning yellow on the tree--more than one, you see; the reward should be worth the effort--they assemble a group of friends and come a-knocking. I lead them around to the tree, stand there and catch the fruit when they drop it, and then give them all cold water to drink before they go. If you're not used to drinking cold water, it can be quite a shock to your system! Some of them like it, and some of them don't, but it's an anomaly for all of them, and that makes it interesting. We exchange a few words in Kono, and I am trying to learn each of their names. Then, holding the papayas on their heads, the little club troops out the gate. They earned some yummy fruit to eat, and I no longer feel guilty for letting good food go to waste. It's a win-win situation.