Fruit sweetens a new friendship in Viet Nam

Learning about jackfruit in Viet Nam

Chị (elder sister) Lan reaches towards me and drops a piece of jackfruit into my hands. “Em ăn đi (Please, eat),” she smiles.

She rests her knife against the rind of the partially opened jackfruit, and her eyes stay on me until I take a bite, eyebrows pinched with concern. “Ngọt không (Is it sweet)?”

She’s asked me this question several times over the past few months. Before my service as a TEFL Volunteer in Viet Nam, the only jackfruit I’d eaten came out of a can and tasted of brine or barbeque sauce.

I was about four months into service when chị Lan taught me that jackfruit, when fresh and ripe, should be sweet. It was a March evening, and I had just left the market that clusters around my host community’s main intersection. I almost didn’t register someone calling my name. It was chị Lan, smiling and beckoning.

At the time, I didn’t know much about chị Lan beyond the fact that her older son attends the high school where I teach. I hesitated, but she beckoned again, so I wove between customers and motorbikes to reach her table.

“Ăn được mít không em (Can you eat jackfruit)?” she asked.

Still speaking, she held out half of a spiky green fruit the size of a volleyball. I took the bag with a smile, only grasping every fourth word or so. I managed a thank you that, in English, would’ve sounded like a question. Still, I understood enough that when I arrived back at the teachers’ residence, I passed the bag to a surprised teacher and explained that the jackfruit was for all of us, from chị Lan.

Fruit, a common gift

I noticed that Peace Corps staff often brought dragon fruit to trainings and pomelos were a constant presence in the school staff room. Nonetheless, gift-giving was a matter of trial and error for me as I settled in this new community and culture.

At home in the U.S., before departing for service, and while wandering through western grocery stores in Ha Noi during pre-service training, I picked up things my community wouldn’t be able to find easily. I gave out maple candies, American-style pancake mix, trail mix, and chocolates during my first few months at site, and my fellow teachers thanked me in slow Vietnamese. They poked curiously at the offerings. Nibbled on them. Most times, I brought leftovers home.

The first time I showed up to the staff room with a bag of tangerines, the teachers smiled at me as they settled around it. The tangerines were reduced to peels in minutes as teachers handed segments of fruit to each other—and to me, though I insisted I’d already eaten. They talked while eating, and the chatting continued long after the tangerines were gone.

I had purchased the tangerines, in part, to test a theory. I had gifted the maple candies and trail mix because that’s the sort of thing people have gifted me when they’ve traveled abroad: foods unique to the cuisine of wherever they went. I assumed that my community would be more excited by something unique than something familiar. Plus, my host community is so small that it doesn’t even classify as a town. The two stores and three market stalls where I buy fruit usually have the same stock. Fruit is common and easily acquired.

But I didn’t consider that the familiar is comfortable and fits into a busy day. Besides that, fruit is delicious. You almost can’t go wrong with a gift of fruit.

Harvesting, processing and enjoying jackfruit

This summer, chị Lan invited me to her house often enough that we developed a routine. Her younger son brought me his English textbook before lunch, and we reviewed vocabulary until he wanted to stop for the day. Later in the day, chị Lan let me help prepare phở cuốn (summer rolls) to sell at the market. After that task, we went jackfruit-hunting in her garden. The trick to finding a ripe jackfruit: get in close and press your nose to the spiky rind. Inhale. If it’s fragrant, it’s ripe. We then carried the jackfruit back to the house.

Jackfruit is not a fruit quickly eaten. You’re best off with plastic gloves and a sturdy knife, and the fruit must be split in half, in half again, and then the innards must be carved away from the rind and core. At this point in the process, chị Lan would hand me a section, which I’d peel and peel until pale strips gave way to a honey-yellow cluster around the seed. Extract the seed and there, the yellow cluster: the part you can eat.

As we slowly processed jackfruit, we talked about the coming school year, her older son’s passion for baking, and her younger son’s newfound confidence riding his bike. Over the weeks, I started catching every third word she said, then every second. Late in the afternoon, chị Lan typically loaded a quarter of the jackfruit into my bicycle basket. She went to the market. I went home.

It’s the end of jackfruit season now. Today, I eat the last of the summer’s jackfruit with chị Lan. While she slices and carves and I peel, she says, “Em ăn đi (Please, eat).”

Then her eyebrows pinch. “Ngọt không? Nếu không ngọt, không ăn được (Is it sweet? If it’s not sweet, it’s not worth eating).”

I think it is sweet, if a little more rubbery than usual. Chị Lan clicks her tongue when she tries it herself. “Không ngọt lắm (Not sweet).”

A sweet new friendship

To be honest, I’m a little tired of jackfruit at this point. I’ve had jackfruit in my produce drawer all summer. More than I could eat, at times. But as I dig out another seed, it occurs to me that the first jackfruit chị Lan gave me, back when we were practically strangers, must have been the first of the season. No one else had jackfruit that early.

Chị Lan has given me jackfruit throughout the summer—waved me away from the fruit stalls at the intersection, snuck it into my bicycle basket, invited me to her house time and time again—all the way up until this very last fruit of the season.

Perhaps it has been a thank you of sorts, for helping her son with his English. But it would be unfair of me to think that’s all it is. She’s been looking out for me, bringing me in, making sure I don’t have to purchase food—perhaps she’s even been telling me that we are friends. If that is the case, I find myself very fortunate and grateful.

I peel another piece of jackfruit. “Ngọt mà (It’s sweet).” I insist.