They just dangled there, tantalizing us with juicy sweet tartness. For weeks, so many weeks, we waited.
“Kenep pre?” I’d ask hopefully. Are they ready?
“Yo poko pare,” Garry would respond. They aren’t ripe yet.
A few times, I tried one, breaking the still supple green rind, pop the pulpy fruit on my tongue, and promptly spit it out.
The kenep is a tropical delight. It grows on a tall tree that provides lovely shade year-round. But by early August, its sweet fruit gets all our attention.
When ripe, the rind tightens so it is cracks open. The pulpy fruit covers a large round seed about the size of an ordinary marble. The flavor lasts a few minutes – something like the taste of SweetTarts candy.
To be fair, it’s not even our tree. It generously leans over the wall from the neighbors house. The low-hanging fruit goes first. Even the man who collects our trash lifts a hand up to pull down a bundle of kenep on his way out the gate.
In about a week after the kenep ripened, Nadia began using a long pole rigged with a Y-shaped branch to isolate and twist small branches and retrieve the bunches.
Small boys, and some not so small, gather at the gate asking if we can give them kenep. A glance up the street shows that another neighbor’s kenep tree has lured other boys onto the adjacent alow wall where they pick the fruit and collect them in plastic bags.
On a good day, the street is littered with the green rinds and crowded with happy-faced kids.
Even Bobby the half-grown pup gets into the action. He doesn’t stop to toss the rind. He just eats the whole thing.
As for the rest of us, we enjoy them one or two at a time, or gather a bunch to eat later.
Like the other best things in life, we know the season will draw to a close, leaving us waiting another 11 months.
A journey across Haiti 