Alright y’all, today is the day.
The events that would occur today required lots of preparation and detailed planning. Sure today was our last work day, but more importantly it was the day I set out to claim my title and eat ten mangos.
In all seriousness, our final full work day was much more important than a silly personal endeavor and took months of hard work, but I did start eating 4 mangos a day to get ready for this upon arrival so it was kind of a big deal.
The day started just as any other. We headed out for breakfast, arrived ten minutes late, and waited for our normal morning tea to be set out. Knowing I would have to start early if I wanted to accomplish my goal without hating myself and mangos for the rest of my time here, I sat down with a mango already in hand. In a weird twist of fate, instead of receiving our typical lemongrass tea, we were served mango smoothies topped with amaranth. After speaking to the cooks and deliberating with the team as to whether or not a smoothie constituted as a full mango, I had completed 1-3 before 9AM. I think this really set the tone for the day, as we all left to the worksite feeling ready to take on the world.
The bulk of our work had been (thankfully) finished the day before, and all we had left was what everyone had been looking forward to, painting the trays! While Hannah M and Ryan wrapped up some final tests up on the roof, the rest of the group and Xuchil team spent the morning sprawled out in the grass, listening to Beyoncé, and painting each tray light yellow. We worked up until lunch, only stopping to eat mangos 4-5 and to greet the group of young students who quickly flooded our worksite.
A few days ago, we had the privilege of conducting a small engineering workshop with the sixth grade class of a local school. As we said our goodbyes, we extended an invitation for them to come visit the Xuchil space and learn more about mesquite and its production. To our surprise, and content, the whole class came (and listened) as Minerva and I described to them the importance of our project and supporting local agriculture. We munched on mesquite pods right off a tree and got lots of photos of the whole group throwing up the ‘Hook’em’ before they left and promised to see us off on our last day.
After lunch, we worked with Minerva and Petry to solve important questions regarding our pulley system, which we sadly won’t be in country to see finished. This will allow them to transport the heavy bags to the roof even on days when only one person is present. The current method of carrying the bags of mesquite up makes prepping the pods very physically demanding as well as potentially dangerous.
After a successful drawing session (and mango #6) we left the worksite to take a quick visit to the neighboring city of Etla. The amaranth producers Minerva works with have a small shop there, and we couldn’t leave without stocking up on delicious popped amaranth (#supportlocalbusinesses). Driving back, we were blown away by the beauty of our surrounding landscape (none of us were awake when we first drove into Suchil). The town exists in a valley, and while we are surrounded by mountains on every walk to work, something about knowing we were nearing the end of our stay made the view seem new again.
By the time we got back, more paint had been purchased and we immediately picked up where we left off. Mangos 7-9 were a blur, but the evening was beautifully spent sitting in a circle with the whole team as we painting all 20 drying trays. With most of the painting done (each member still needing to personalize a gusset on the racks) we headed back home (El Pedregal) for dinner. It’s pretty normal for our dinners to run long, but today’s, maybe because we knew there would only be one more or because we still had quite a few work details to hammer out, went until 11PM. Our four hour discussion was a culmination of everything we had learned from this experience. What it means to be a good engineer (and social worker) , a leader, and most importantly the importance of cultural humidity (read as cultural humility, it’s a running joke within Team Mexico ;). We went to our rooms exhausted, not even having the energy to write a blog post until 2 days later.. I did, however, manage to eat my 10th and final mango of the day.
Peace, love, holy heck I’m going to miss this,
- Gaby y Team Mexico
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