Mango Mayhem

I'm not known for being resourceful or good at problem solving, but believe you me, when there's a bag of mangoes on my bed, no knife to peel them with, and dinner is more than an hour off, simple objects in my immediate vicinity morph into multi-purpose supertools. Let me explain.

Yesterday, I went to the market with some girls from the class. It was fun walking through Jamkhed, which is loud and lively and has children everywhere that stop to wave and smile. Some of them can even yell to us a few English words. Anyway, we made our way down a narrow alley lined with merchants and food and trinkets until it opened into a massive gathering of fruit and vegetable stands. The first stand I stopped at was selling only mangoes and the little boy running it cut off a slice of the one he was holding and gave it to me. I put in my mouth and let me tell you, this was a glorious moment. I've never tasted a mango so sweet and soft. Anyway, I asked "Rupee Kay?" which means "How many rupees?" to which he answered "uhn fo fi-rupee"--One for five rupees. One for five rupees. Likely, you do not understand the gravity of this man's statement. Five rupees is worth a little less than a dime here. Like 9 cents. So, I got seven. Seven giant, succulent mangoes for about 65 cents altogether. After I bought them, we kept walking through the town until it started to pour rain. We ducked under a tarp from a fruit stand until a rickshaw--basically a go-ped with three wheels and a big metal cage for passengers to squeeze into--pulled up and offered us a ride back to CRHP which was about a mile away. For twenty rupees (about 40 cents, and split four ways), we thought it was a steal. We jumped in and he drove us home, the rickshaw creaking and rattling the whole way. Rickshaws are everywhere in India from what I've heard, but, you might be interested to know, rickshaws here are all known for having speakers and sub-woofers that make western car audio systems sound like ipod earbuds. Anyway... mangoes. So I took them into my room, set them on the bed, and scanned my room for a knife or something made for cutting things. Nothing of the sort. Anywhere. I shuffled through my desk and through some things in the bathroom, but to no avail. Nothing sharp. By this point, my heart rate had increased considerably. This called for action. I, almost instinctively, grabbed my passport from my left front pocket and sunk the thin, hard cardboard corner into the skin of the first mango I could grab. Since I'll need it to get through customs on my way home, I reasoned that I should not over-saturate the passport with mango juice. For a replacement, I grabbed my cell-phone charger from the wall and inserted one of the metal prongs (the part that plugs into the wall) into the slice I'd made with my passport and cut a rough line all the way around the mango. Unfortunately, since the prongs weren't long enough to pry the mango open, I had to find something a little longer, but still thin enough to fit between the layers of mango. Believe it or not, a 50-cent Euro coin in my desk which I was given in Amsterdam did the trick. In just minute or two I'd devoured that thing. And let me tell you, it was worth every awkward second of cutting my mango with random objects and every awkward second of having to clean them off after. Every single second.