The Mango Tree

This is a picture of a contented small boy until a moment ago deeply immersed in his own little world, looking up as he realises that his mother is taking a photo. The small boy is me, perhaps aged three, underneath the big mango tree that stood outside the old bungalow in Upanga Road, Dar-es-Salaam.

The little boy is holding a watering can, early evidence of a life-long interest in growing things.

The tree is an important part of his life. Each day his ayah, along with other ayahs from the area, sits under the tree looking after him while his parents go to work. His ayah is called Fatuma, and she is chubby and cheerful and very good with him. Amongst other things, because she doesn't speak much English he learns KiSwahili at her knee.

The area under the mango tree is popular with the ayahs because, throughout the year, it throws a deep shade, so it's cool beneath it even on the hottest and most humid of days. It also, in its season, produces a delicious fruit.

Mango trees feature in other gardens later in the small boy's life. There was one in this garden in Kingston, Jamaica, and the picture also shows a well-tended vegetable bed which that watering can promised.

Perhaps unsurprisingly mangos remained the small boy's favourite fruit, a messy fruit to eat so he always maintained that the best place to enjoy a good mango was in the bath.