Soap and Mangoes

it's thursday, early afternoon, it feels like it's been a long time since I last blogged, which is true, more than a couple of weeks. The sun is strong, we are hot today.

We are in the prime of mango season. We have four mango trees near our house, the closest is 20-30 feet from the back our house. Everyday men, women, boys and girls pass by our house in search of mangos. We are sometimes woken in the middle of the night by someone with a flashlight searching for mangoes in the middle of the night. There are always small groups of people, typically children, at the mango trees as soon as day breaks, hoping to scavenge all the mangoes that have fallen over the course of the night. Sometimes a mango will fall to the ground already partially eaten, a flying fox got to it first. We don't eat those mangoes, we leave them on the ground and the chickens enjoy them. We toss rotten mangoes into the bush, they are enjoyed by bugs and lizards and crabs. We are told that pigs are fed the spoiled mangoes and that the rat (they are mostly just fat mice, but they call them rats here) population increases dramatically during a good mango season, and we believe it, having seen two rats near our house this past week (one inside). Groups of men come and climb the mango trees and harvest basketfuls. Old men come and sit by the biggest mango tree after a long days work in the garden, they wait for a mango to fall down then they pick it up and head home. We see waves of children, before school, during lunch break, when kindergarten is finished and again at the end of the school day.

In other news, We led a soap-making workshop two days ago, it was everyone's (including ours) first time making soap. There were about 50 people attending the workshop, it seems to have worked but we have to let the soap sit for a month before we can try it out. this is the best way we could think of to get people to start washing their hands.

Here's the recipe we used:
3 liters coconut oil
225 grams caustic soda
1 liter water
Put the caustic soda in the water and wait for it to cool down. Add to oil and mix until it turns into soap. Pour into molds and let it sit for a month. Taste it to make sure it's good. They can make their own coconut oil here, so it's pretty cheap. We'll just have to wait and see if it catches on.