Food grows on trees here

Sugar cane and bananas

An interesting difference in the daily life of suburban Michigan and the Dominican countryside is the natural knowledge of the people. In some ways it seems as though teaching environmental values is going to be more difficult here because there is less formal education. There is trash everywhere. It’s as rare here to see someone use a trash can as it is to see someone not use one in the States. However, there is more of a connection with the land and the resources than we have in the States. In our culture we recognize the products and although there are a great many Americans who know the natural environment, the majority of people where I come from cannot identify a tree and its uses unless they bought it and planted it themselves in front yard…myself included in most cases. We can identify the wood in a hard wood floor but can’t pick the tree out of a line up, let alone a forest.

Have you ever thought about the natural form of the things you eat and use? Aside from the Halls menthol candies and the boxed, ultraviolet light-treated milk, the grand majority of products here in the campo are grown here and the people know them in their natural forms.

Avacado!

Cashews for example – we know what cashews are, they come salted in tins and are delicious, a little expensive. Do you know how they grow? Is it a tree, bush or do they grow underground? Have you ever considered it? Have you ever eaten the fruit?

Though I originally pegged him as a bit of a callejero – a street guy - with his gelled hair and shiny dress shoes, my 20 year old brother is an astonishing wealth of information on the plants, trees, insects and birds of this place. You would think that a guy like this would be way too cool to hang out with the strange American girl whose always wearing that stupid looking motorcycle helmet, but I have been extremely lucky to have a professor on all things natural here. We spend countless hours every week wandering down the river, sifting through my book of Dominican trees and discussing the uses and habits of all the organisms. The other day we were looking through the tree book when we came across Cajuil (ca – hwheel). It’s a small tree with a strange shaped fruit that he told me yields a nut that you can dry and eat. While looking at the drawing of the fruit and listening to his mini-lecture it dawned on me that the shape was quite familiar. I went to my room to retrieve the delicious trail mix that had been lovingly sent from the States and returned to him with a handful of cashews…the nut that just a few minutes early he had been describing to a woman who had no idea what he was talking about. He was astonished and glad to taste the delicious treat without all the work of harvesting and drying it!

A cashew growing off the bottom of the fruit!