Notes From Public School - Day 88

When I look at myself in the mirror each morning, I see a missionary teacher.

A missionary not in the sense of the father in Barbara Kingsolver’s powerful The Poisonwood Bible.

No, I’m not a missionary like that.

I try to be a missionary in the sense of St. Francis.

I go out to my elementary school and writing table with joy in my heart and grit in my hands and feet, ready to give myself freely to the world around me.

I try to be a missionary like that.

I try to be like the mangoes I wrote about when I lived in Mali.

Here is that story - 

This is the season for picking mangoes. 

As I stand at the front door of our mud bricked, thatched roof house in our village, I look out over the land before me and see thirty foot tall mango trees draped with thousands of yellow mangoes. 

They make the trees glow, as if the trees themselves are saints with rings of soft light around their heads. 

The mangoes hang on the trees as if they are giant drops of rain after a storm, drops of rain frozen in time as they fall off of the leaved branches and begin their descent to the ground.

I watch a child with a long hook ended stick, two pieces of bamboo tied together and used to pick ripe mangoes from the tree. 

I see the stick dancing and weaving it’s way around the tree in search of the crisp, sweet fruit. 

Sometimes children climb into the trees and shake the branches until the ground thumps with the sound of falling mangoes. 

When a strong gust of wind blows, ripe mangoes fall from the trees to the earth. 

Groups of children scramble to the ground under the trees and search for the much loved fruit.

During mango season, women cut the mangoes and cook the fruit with peanut sauce and serve it as a meal. 

I love it!

My Malinke friends believe if you eat too many mangoes, you will sleep for a week. 

I know for a fact if you eat too many mangoes you will do something for a week, it doesn’t involve sleeping!

Even though it’s the hottest part of the year, I love this time because it’s mango season. 

This is one of God’s many kindnesses to us, to bring us the hope of mangoes in the despair of the dry season. 

And this is one of my Malinke friends’ many kindnesses, to share their mangoes with me.

For this I am thankful.