About Us

A teacher visiting the Caribbean is hiking on the North shore of St Croix and comes across a farmer cutting grass for his horses.  After friendly exchanges they discover they're both headed the same direction and the farmer gives the teacher a ride.  Along the way the farmer points out local landmarks; the island butcher, a popular swimming hole after heavy rains and a portion of road especially known for mango picking.  

As they continue, farmer tells the story how that summer the mangos were so numerous that it caused quite a stir.  He explained it started as a good year for sellers, but soon everyone had so many mangos no one was making money.  Cooks were very creative with mango recipes at first, but after a while, people became tired of all the mango dishes.  Anything mango started getting very little appreciation.  The farmer said that even drivers began complaining that the roads were becoming slick from rotting fruit.  

At a family gathering, the farmer recalled people making fun of the bountiful mangos and an elder became annoyed and scolded the group for joking about abundance.  The elder began to speak in a serious and hushed tone, "You need to start preparing. You need to start securing your homes and taking care of your children. You need to prepare because a storm is coming".  The family laughed at the elder's strange prediction. "What in the world do a ton of mangos have to do with a storm?  How do YOU know a storm is coming?" they asked.  The elder replied, "I don't know a storm is coming.  The mangos know". 

Two months after the family gathering two category five hurricanes struck the island of St Croix within two weeks.  The elder had recalled the last time mangos covered the roads was during hurricane Hugo in 1989, which caused widespread damage to the Caribbean.  Although there's no definitive proof a heavy crop is an indicator of an impending destructive storm, anecdotal evidence abounds of animals exhibiting strange behavior before natural disasters, birds detecting environmental changes and beginning their migration early and marine life detecting barometric alterations and diving deep into the sea. So, how much do we really understand about plants sensory capabilities?

Coincidence or not, story moved the teacher.  She thought it was a stirring reminder of how we get caught up in our goals and plans that we stop paying attention to what's actually happening around us.  How often do we miss out on a different path that may be better because we're so attached to our current one?  The teacher shared The Mangos Know story many times with her students as a lesson of the importance of being present.