Guavas - les gustan?

August is the lull in the wet season. We’ve had a week or more of warm sunny days and only a little rain; enough to keep things brilliant green and to see tall yellow lilies, red gladioli, pale-gold and pink roses, and huge green umbrella leaves bursting from their garden beds. The sickly sweet smell of guava fruit has occupied the front yard again, where we have the most prolific tree since Eden. The smell will stay with us for months, wafting in through the bathroom window, and once again we hear the soft thud of heavy fruit falling to its lawn bed at night.

Some of our neighbours and other passers-by ask if they can have the fruit to make guava relish, a local specialty, and we are happy to oblige. But I’m afraid it’s all wasted on us. The cloying perfume is too much. Last year a neighbour gave us a jar of relish in return for a bucket of guavas, but still we couldn’t stomach it, so the delighted gardener got to take it home. Yesterday I brought just one ripe fruit into the house and it wasn’t long before my partner was asking, “Why does it smell like cat pee in here?” I explained that it was just guava pheromones.

During last year's fruiting a delightful old indigenous couple, who come round regularly to sell typical fabrics and clothing, asked if they could have some of our guavas. We collected them together and they left with two supermarket bags full, faces beaming. They couldn't carry any more, as they already had a big bundle of fabrics each, the man with the larger one which he carries on his back, and which must weigh almost as much as him. They are both tiny, wiry people, and even the man barely comes up to my shoulder. A short while after they left our house I walked down the street to collect my son from the bus stop. The old couple had stopped in a doorway only two houses down, and were sitting there gorging themselves on the guavas! They looked a little bashful as I walked past, but then we all laughed and I went on my way.

I’ve also just discovered that my Columbian friend loves them (“Guayabas! Me encanta!”), and I’m now convinced that guava compatibility is an inherited gene present only in peoples from the Latin American tropics. I’m picking up the good ones each morning and keeping them for her, but I have to keep the bowl of guavas outside. To me they’re worse than the smelliest French cheese.

The only members of our family who eat our guavas are the dogs. Last season our big dog was in the habit of going to the front yard each night before bed, sniffing around until he found a guava that was just right, then taking it inside to eat for his bedtime snack. He seems to like them very ripe. Our small dog likes to munch on them too. She is also a great ball fetcher and has just invented the new game of guava fetch. Each time I throw a bad guava into the compost heap, she brings it back for me.

Mariposa Pesada
23 August 2006