The Mango: So sweet and yet so bitter

Ashlee was under the weather last week, She notices a blister like rash on her face and concentrated around her mouth which was extremely uncomfortable. She called up the PC and they said it is a common condition that volunteers run into. It is a poison ivy-like rash that is developed from the juices on freshly picked ripe mangoes. So the fruit that she has been impatiently waiting on for months now has now created some serious heartache. The solution? She must take care when picking the fruit and then thoroughly rinse it and let it sit out for several hours and then she can enjoy. A bit less instant gratification, but definitely better than a blistered face. She said she took some benadryl and was out of it for over a day waiting for it to go away.
The weather had been changing all day when we spoke today. It started out cloudy and switched to sunny and 92 degrees and had been rained most of the evening. The rain at night makes sleep a challenge even with ear plugs. At least their roof doesn't leak, which is more than their friend Sarah can say. She had to sleep under a poncho a few nights to keep from getting soaked. Her village is supposed to help her rethatch her roof so that should make things a lot better for her.
Andy and Joseph have been working on getting a tree farm together. The recently met with the chief and they made the presentation to him about he tree farm and he liked it so much he gave them 50 hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) of land to start the tree farm and promised them more land when the first one was completed. The chief was going to also start a tree farm on his own land.
Ashlee had been working with a nurse from the local hospital (from Hong Kong or Singapore) on the malnutrition they were seeing in the babies and small children admitted to the hospital. They identified the children admitted for malnutrition and then visited the villages where these children came from to try and teach about how to avoid malnutrition. They visited many of these villages, using a car to get so far and then walking several miles per day throughout the villages to visit the families and learn about their diet. Ashlee said it took 45 minutes to ride her bike from home into the hospital each morning and then she leave from there to visiting the villages, and then return to the hospital and she ride her bike 45 minutes home again. It makes for a long but rewarding day.
One of the things they are trying to introduce is the use of peanuts as a source of available protein. The villages have peanuts, or ground nuts as they call them, but apparently need help in understanding how to use and store for prolonged supplies. They also have a funded project to introduce soybeans into the villages as an even better crop from a nutritional standpoint. She is working on teaching the villages how to plant, harvest and store. She was going to create a manual on the techniques for future Peace Corps volunteers as several of these villages are scheduled to get volunteers placed in them in the next year. It seems like there are high times and lows working as a volunteer, but this works seems to be rewarding for them both and they are seeing progress in their work.