Watermelons Everywhere

Written on October 27th, 2010

Last week Thursday found me spending the day in the town of Barra--on the far west end of the North Bank where I catch the ferry to go to Kombo. Erica and I had decided to meet at our favorite (and the only) bar/brothel to get a bunch of work done for the HIV/AIDs bike trek. Trust me the irony of our meetings location did not escape us. As I was heading back to KJJ I stopped in the car park to grab a small gift for my family and settled on one of the first watermelons of the season. At 20D (less than $1) it was an excellent choice. It was only later that night as we were sitting around under the stars, chomping on slices with juice running down our faces that it dawned on me, "It's the middle of October and I am eating a watermelon."
Granted the seasons here are very different so the fact that October is when watermelons start to get ripe is more amusing than amazing. The more surprising realization was that I hadn't eaten any watermelon since last November. With electricity, green houses and Americas "super market culture" you can get almost anything all year round, even when its not in season, as long as you're willing to pay the price. Though I'm not a frequent watermelon eater in Vermont in the middle of February I have been to my fair share of brunches where fruit salad prominently features watermelon when there are four inches of snow outside. Here that most definitely is not the case, we eat what you can buy at the market and what you can buy in the market is what can be grown NOW. This inevitably means a lack of variety in our diet but also we get our fill of things when they are in season. For example, right now my family has pumpkin coming out our ears so we have pumpkin at every meal. During the weeks when mangoes were ripe I was averaging two or three mangoes a day. Though I am getting understandably sick of pumpkin I remind myself to enjoy it now because once its finished that's another year before I'll be able to eat it again.
The seasonality of produce here makes going to the market a constant surprise. Two weeks ago at the big market on Saturday I found huge, delicious, juicy cucumbers--a pile of three--for 5D (about 10 cents). Last weekend I searched high and low but no cucumbers to be found. Next time I come across them that will definitely make my day but who knows when that will be.
In my daydreams about home food plays a prominent role, especially spinach, tomatoes, asparagus and strawberries, but as I think about all those things I wonder if I would appreciate them more in America if they were not constantly available to me? I understand and strongly support the argument that we should consume locally available foods rather than eating strawberries in February which come to us via gallons of fuel and subsequent environmental pollution. But there is also something to be said for variety as a marker of good nutrition. A diet consisting of rice, tomato paste, onions, oil and pumpkin is arguably far less balanced and nutritious than eating rice, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, onions, carrots etc. For people in the Gambia and America the factors that prohibit us from eating a balanced diet are in many ways the same--money and preference--but when it comes to access that is where things split. Gambian families don't necessarily have access to a variety of fruits and vegetables all year round while for most Americans they just need to step into the produce section of their local supermarket and they have a cornucopia at their fingertips.
Now I'm not arguing in favor of using gas guzzling trucks to ship watermelons from California to Vermont in the middle of the winter but I think it's important to realize that all the talk of buying locally and seasonally comes from a position of privilege and choice. Where for some it's not a fashionable trend their buying into but rather the stark reality of how they live and eat.
All this being said next time it's snowing and you really want Belgian waffles with fresh strawberries of breakfast, DO IT, all the while thinking of how lucky you are that you live in a place with economy and infrastructure to support eating strawberries or watermelon in the winter.