Impregnating Papaya Trees?

Pop Quiz: How does one ensure that their Papaya tree bears fruit?

Answer: By having a cord-cob impregnate it of course!

Tojo and I each planted trees at the same time
as a race for the first fruit

This is the little nugget of wisdom I received from Tojo upon return form my week long trip to Maputo for Mid-Service Conference. Held approximately half way through your service, MSC is a chance to swap challenges, successes, anxieties, and aspirations with the other volunteers from your training group after your first year of service. Though I have seen many of the Moz 17ers  in the past year, particularly those which live in the North, there were several which I hadn't seen since the last time we were in Maputo together. Hanging out in the capital city and taking advantage of the wide variety of food choices, shopping opportunities, freely flowing beer, and air conditioned hotel rooms with them was fantastic. The real reason for the conference's existence though is to have the Peace Corps Medical Office check in on each volunteers health. In years past, this had meant a battery of diagnostic tests, extensive dental exams, and the ever famous stool samples. Much to my dismay, PCMO had determined that having volunteers poop in a cup three times during the week and sending said cups to a lab for analysis was an expensive way to find out very little. So the stool samples got cut in the most recent budget cycle and none of us had the opportunity to win the Toblerone chocolate bar traditionally given to the volunteer who was first able to complete a hat-trick.

The tree I planted. Before this intervention,
my tree was about 4 in taller than his

Instead, we had a boring simple physical and dental check, with blood tests and other exams tailored to each PCVs specific medical needs. Of course, there was a big group discussion about safe sex practices and the status of HIV/AIDS in Mozambique (11.5% of the population, which is much lower than what I had told many during my trip home). Following that vein, I was welcomed back to my house by the sight of two young papaya trees having been impaled by cord cobs. Hoping to figure out what sort of crazy shenanigans Tojo had been up to in my absence, I asked him why was he stabbing my trees with food waste. He promptly reminded me that a week earlier we had talked about the possibility of the trees being male, and therefore not giving fruit. Knowing nothing about fruit trees, I deferred to his better judgement and asked him what we should do about it. The solution he told me was to force a sex change by cutting a hole in the tree. Since I thought that he was joking, I told him to go right ahead and perform the papaya tree right of passage.


Well here is the result, a tennis ball sized hole in each tree with a corn-cob phallus stabbed through the middle.  Beyond the insanely obvious symbolism, I can't see any way that this could help the tree's give fruit, but perhaps someone more agriculturally inclined could prove me wrong. The question I ask now is, will the trees start growing hair in weird places and break out in zits?





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On another note, I saw my second ever chameleon today on my way to the mercado and snapped a picture of it. Eric and I stopped and watched it for a while just to see if it would change colors, but it seemed to think that if it just froze in place we wouldn't see it, so no color change was necessary. Since being first greeted to Alto Molocue by a chameleon  I have come to see it as a role model for a PCV: adjust to local conditions, move slowly but deliberately, and keep your eyes on a swivel for any opportunities of threats.