Waiter, there's a beetle in my mango

The other night, Jolene and I had just finished a gourmet dinner of oatmeal topped with mango and banana. The fruit here is delicious beyond description, especially the mangos. They put their stringy, tough, tasteless counterparts in the U.S. to shame. So it should be no surprise that such a simple meal can be belly-rubbingly satisfying.

As I was cleaning up, I saw a black spot on the mango pit. Looking closer, I realized the black spot had six legs. A beetle had been living in the pit, and it had come out when I scraped away the fruit from its home.

Back in Oregon, I would have been repulsed. I might even have marched to the store where I bought the fruit.

Here, though, I merely made a mental note to check the pits carefully before biting the last morsels of mango.

Traveling puts me in a state of mind where bugs in fruit, tires falling off cars, traffic jams and electricity outages don’t matter that much. Getting upset about inconveniences doesn’t fix them, and with the right outlook, most “problems” become adventures.

I’m looking forward to more adventures in the five weeks to come. Maybe I can even bring my traveler’s sense of opportunity to the challenges back home.

-Catherine Ryan