Wes­ley Gib­bings

Peren­ni­al busy­body Gia Gas­pard-Tay­lor cer­tain­ly out­did her­self when she led the stag­ing of a na­tion­al man­go fes­ti­val four years ago. The Ju­ly 8 edi­tion has been de­scribed as the best yet, bar­ring a few note­wor­thy short­com­ings. For ex­am­ple, the fes­ti­val could have of­fered a greater va­ri­ety of man­go prod­ucts-there are sup­posed to be at least 50 prod­uct lines-and pro­vid­ed more fresh fruit for sale. "Cli­mate change," was the rea­son of­fered by man­go-prod­ucts man­u­fac­tur­er and rur­al women's ac­tivist Rose Ra­jbansee for the short­age of the fruit it­self. Though she usu­al­ly taps re­li­able fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty sources for her sup­plies, Ra­jbansee said there was a recog­nis­able shift in the core man­go sea­son over re­cent years. "You just don't know when you will get and when you will not get," she said. Gas­pard-Tay­lor's re­sponse was the same when asked why there weren't more man­goes on sale at this year's fes­ti­val. She re­called the 2009 chal­lenge by Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) math­e­mati­cian and man­gophile Dr Charles de Matas to stage the first-ever man­go fes­ti­val. "It rained all day," Gas­pard-Tay­lor said, "but we pulled it off."

The sun shone all day last Sun­day, though, and a fes­ti­val shut­tle spared guests the long, hot walk from the pub­lic carpark to the cov­ered area of the UWI Field Sta­tion near the Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal. In one cor­ner was Dan Jag­ger­nath of the Field Nat­u­ral­ists Club, with dried co­conuts, dis­em­bow­elled by squir­rels, now used for sprout­ing man­go plants. Jag­ger­nath be­lieves this use of co­conuts will help re­duce the use of plas­tics in agri­cul­ture. But he did con­cede that co­conut grow­ers would not read­i­ly ap­prove of his en­dorse­ment of the work of squir­rels. Across the way was Ra­jbansee, from Man­zanil­la, and her eight man­go lines, in­clud­ing a high­ly-re­gard­ed kuchela and man­go wine. In an­oth­er cor­ner was Colleen Mal­wah Aqui with her Rod­co line of soaps, can­dles and gift bas­kets. In the mid­dle was an ill-de­fined "cen­tre-stage"-to use the de­scrip­tion of the rov­ing MC-where win­ners of the man­go chow com­pe­ti­tion re­ceived their prizes and where the man­go-suck­ing show­down was staged. Four con­tes­tants lined up for the man­go-suck­ing con­test, which chal­lenged par­tic­i­pants to leave as lit­tle man­go pulp on two medi­um-sized man­goes in as short a space of time as pos­si­ble. There was an ear­ly ob­jec­tion by con­tes­tants when one green man­go ap­peared to have sur­vived the ear­li­er man­go chow and ap­peared on the ta­ble in front of last year's win­ner, Michelle Graigg of To­ba­go.

In the end, it was Wendy Fe­lix-Baksh of Mt Hope who emerged vic­to­ri­ous, fol­low­ing a clin­i­cal dis­play that left but one man­go speck on her white T-shirt and lit­tle ev­i­dence of pulp on the stringy re­mains of the man­go it­self. In sec­ond place was T&T Guardian colum­nist Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni, who wore black for the oc­ca­sion and dis­played a pref­er­ence for the dou­ble-hand­ed, chin-down pos­ture. Graigg was un­able to per­form a re­peat of last year's per­for­mance and placed third. A fourth con­tes­tant was un­able to com­plete the task when her fi­nal man­go fell to the ground, where farm an­i­mals pre­sum­ably roam on a reg­u­lar day, and was, rather sen­si­bly, not re­trieved. San­dra Greenidge of Champs Fleurs won the man­go chow com­pe­ti­tion with a si­nus-clear­ing con­coc­tion that im­pressed the judges, while in sec­ond place was Moti­lal Ram­lochan, a farmer from Aranguez. In third place was Ulin Ma­hon of To­ba­go. Greenidge ran a booth with man­go pre­serves, cur­ry man­go, her prize-win­ning chow and con­fec­tionery, in­clud­ing man­go fudge. Live en­ter­tain­ment ranged from the har­mo­nious cho­rus­es of the Pt Fortin Home­work Cen­tre Choir to drum­ming, dances and young Kes the Il­lu­sion­ist who moved from ta­ble to ta­ble per­form­ing re­mark­able mag­ic tricks, with the help of a bleach-blonde as­sis­tant who many thought was do­ing a Nic­ki Mi­naj im­pres­sion. The man­go-flavoured stewed chick­en was served with veg­etable rice and the sug­ar­cane juice touched the spot. But drinks and eats were gen­er­al­ly in short sup­ply-a sit­u­a­tion made worse by the short­age of ripe julies and starch man­goes in the ven­dors' booths. Gas­pard-Tay­lor and the Net­work of Rur­al Women Pro­duc­ers, how­ev­er, had noth­ing to be ashamed about. Few will have left the field sta­tion not look­ing for­ward to Man­go Fes­ti­val V in 2013.