Fruits of the monsoon

I arrived back in Borneo on New Year's Day. I haven't seen a blue sky since.

December to February is the "rainy season" in Borneo, and although when I first heard this term I laughed it off, it raining every day in Borneo regardless of the season, I now understand. It rains. And rains. Every day. At 5am, at noon, mid-afternoon, and crashing down on my roof in the middle of the night. The rain god does not care what I am doing; if I am running to my car with a pile of books in my arms, if the only nearby shelter is a very flimsy tree, it rains. Sometimes it's just a light scattering of raindrops that goes on for five hours, sometimes it's a shake-in-your-gumboots, Thor-striking-the-Earth thunderstorm that goes on for five hours. In the rainy season in Borneo, it rains. You have been warned.

There are some good side effects though, one of which is the fruit. An American colleague of mine, here on her first foreign job, was holding forth at the breakfast table at a Project meeting last year. "I don't mind the food here," she said, "but what I can't understand is why they don't sell all the fruit all the time. Last week I could buy oranges, this week none of the market stalls are selling them. It's so weird." The rest of us looked at each other, wondering who was going to explain the concept of "seasonable food" to a girl who'd lived her life in a place where, if oranges are out of season, they get flown in from somewhere they are in season. 

I think it's great - it's a kind of marking of the seasons that you just don't get in England. When the rambutans started appearing on trees in mid-November, everyone got excited. It's a little like Xmas - if the decorations are up half the year, the actual event doesn't seem so special any more! 

Rambutans are one of my favourite Bornean fruit. They taste a little like litchis, but with a ragged, woody centre instead of a smooth pip. They have a bright, prickly covering – you can spot them at the market a mile off, ranging from a watercolour-yellow-pink to a deep, sensuous purple.

Then there’s tarap, a peculiarly gross fruit with a hard shell protecting segments of wet, sticky flesh that cling to their stems with inner tentacles, and which make a squelchy sound as you pull them off. You suck the sweet-and-sour flesh off a grey inner pip.

Buah tampoi is a much neater fruit, encased in a thick shell that is squeezed to break it into two clean halves.

Langsat feels a little like it comes from the citrus family with its thin peel and segmented innards, but it has a subtler taste than that of oranges and lemons.

Of course, it being the rainy season, the air is thick with the stench of that most Malaysian of fruit, the durian. The durian is famous for its smell; it’s not unbearable on its own, a sort of slightly sickly-sweet air that makes you wonder vaguely what’s gone off; the durian, however, is not sold bit by bit, but by the truckload. The road to Kota Kinabalu is lined with pop-up stalls, trucks with an umbrella stuck over the heap of yellow fruit, a scale on a table, an old granny or a teenager guarding the family fortune. These sections of the road are problematic for a foreign driver – I simply never expect the person in front of me to suddenly slam on brakes and turn, squealing, off the road, as if just the glimpse of a durian turned on the desire switch in the driver’s brain. People go a little crazy here for durian; luckily, as a foreigner, I’m allowed to say no. The conversation goes a little like this:

  “Emily, have some durian!” (laughter all round)

  “Oh, uh, no, thanks.”

  “Ah, you don’t like it eh? We Malaysians love it!”

  “I know, I’m sure I’ll learn to love it while I’m here, but not just yet.”

  “Inshallah, inshallah, you will learn.”

And then their eyes light up, they make a comment along the lines of “all the more for us then!” and everyone adoringly grabs a slimy piece to suck on.