La Fruta Bomba*

Ways I know living in Africa has forever changed me:

This evening I arrived home late after a big meeting and decided to whip together a smoothie for dinner using the blender I got for my birthday. Papayas are in season right now and I'd bought a large one last week that I needed to use up. I also decided to throw in a banana (always in season), some fruit yogurt and soy milk. All the fixings for a healthy, nutritious meal.

I'd already used half of the papaya in a smoothie the other day, and had stored the remaining half, complete with seeds, wrapped in aluminum foil in the refrigerator. I got out the rest of the papaya and was removing the foil when a larger than usual cockroach crawled across the counter right next to my hand. I got the vague impression that it came from inside the papaya, but I figured that was impossible so I went on ahead and started scooping out the seeds. To my horror, another smaller cockroach crawled out from inside the fruit and made its way towards the rind, away from my scraping spoon. I quickly snubbed out both cockroaches with my finger (remember my admission in an earlier post about this?) and thought for a moment about what to do.

Now if you've ever seen a papaya you know it's full of strange black seeds that look somewhat like fish eggs. There are also tons of them inside the cavity of each fruit. Really, it's a pretty plausible idea that cockroaches could be living inside that jumble of slippery seeds. I drew the papaya right up to my face and started inspecting. As far as I could tell, there were no signs of movement, no nasty cockroach eggs masquerading as innocuous seeds, and certainly no dead insects - at least none that were readily visible.

What a dilemma.

I looked at the blender with all the other smoothie ingredients inside, just waiting to be mixed into deliciousness. I really like papaya in my smoothies, and they are only available during a short window each year (just like every other yummy fruit in Mozambique - no year round stocking in supermarkets here, folks) so I wanted to take advantage. Plus, I hated the thought of throwing out perfectly good fruit, especially since I live in a country full of people that go hungry and I'm on a tight budget myself. On the other hand, there was a high probability that not one but *two* cockroaches had been hanging out inside the papaya just moments before. Perhaps there were more in there that I couldn't detect...

Dear readers, I'd like to tell you that it was a difficult decision for me to make. It wasn't. I thought "What the hell - I'm sure I've eaten worse things!" and scooped the papaya into the blender and pulsed away. My smoothie was delicious, possible extra protein and all.

Had this incident taken place back in Austin, I'd have certainly thrown out not only the papaya, but all the fruit in my kitchen just in case. How things change...

*In Cuba and throughout much of the Caribbean, papayas are referred to as "fruta bomba" because "papaya" is a slang word for a woman's lady bits. The name supposedly comes from the fact that all those nasty little black seeds will explode out of the papaya if it is thrown or dropped from a significant enough height.