Notes from the Mango Farm 4 of 10

Thursday, 10/15

Day 6

Today was actually fairly relaxing, I'm pretty much used to the work now and Taka and I got to work with another team this afternoon that work at a slower pace. Taka and I made sure that we were extra careful with the fruit and picking conservatively. This was because of what happened this morning:

Taka, I, and a Taiwanese guy named Water (he chose that name because a character in his name has three water characters in it) went to a section set apart from the main mango field. We were doing what we usually do, picking near-ripe mangoes from the tree (it takes five days for the fruit to hit the market, so you can't just pick "ripe" fruit) and placing them in crates when Dave came roaring up in his old Toyota SUV. Taka had the misfortune to be closest to Dave as Dave stepped out of the car.

Dave took one look at the crate Taka was filling and saw that some of the mangoes had sap oozing from them. About mango sap: mango sap oozes from the area where the stem meets the top of the mango. If that's snapped, sap oozes from that area and trickles down the fruit and on to others in the same crate which is very bad. The sap is some gnarly stuff, if it gets on your skin and you don't neutralize it with some base, your skin's going to come right off. For mangoes, you ever see areas of black crap on the skin of mangoes? That's from the sap.

Anyways, Dave gave a Taka a big talking to: "I told you a thousand times! You have to be gentle with the mangoes If you snap the stem you're going to burn the fruit! Also what is this crap that you're picking, these aren't even ripe yet..."

He then told Taka to leave the farm. Taka stood there for a moment, trying to process what was being said to him and then started to take out the unripe/sap damaged fruit. Dave was pissed, "What are you doing? Leave it! GO!"

I stood there, watching the incident like a car crash, unsure of what I was supposed to do. I was new to the farm and wasn't sure if it was my place to step in, but looking back that's an excuse. I just stood there, afraid of being yelled at too, not saying shit.

Water, however, went over and said to Dave, "Just give him a warning, you warned me before, remember? It's ok we will tell him [about the mangoes]."

Water and I stepped in close to Taka and Dave had a look at us three then said, "Ok. This is all your guys fault too your supposed to know better. I spend twelve months growing the fruit and you guys take five minutes to ruin it."

Dave went back to his car, slammed the door, and roared off.

Water turned to Taka, "You ok?"

Taka, "Ok, ok."

Water, "Don't worry. He talk to me like this before. He's like this. He's actually ok guy."

Taka, "Ok."

Me, "He's probably feeling more pressure now, maybe that's why he's more hot tempered."

Taka nodded and smiled, "No problem," and then went back to work.

I talked to Taka later in the day and he was feeling better. He even showed me a simple Judo throw (he's a black belt in Judo).

I said, "If Day-bee (are nickname for Dave) gives you a hard time you can use that one."

We laughed and moved on.