Guinea Bissau – country of the cashews

One thing I will always associate Guinea Bissau with is the amount of cashews they have. We drove through forests of cashew trees and right now is the main harvest. Trees full of bright yellow and red fruits everywhere and there is a special sweet smell in the air as well. Each cashew fruit produces one nut – that’s why they are so expensive. The fruit tastes good too but I can’t eat many at a time because they leave a funny layer on my teeth but they are very juicy.

We saw people collecting buckets full of cashews and then picking the nuts of. The fruits are hardly exported, it’s the nuts what is most valuable. The locals eat some of the fruits or use them to produce liquor but a big amount of the cashews (fruit) just go to waste. It really is a shame but the same with the mangos. There are just too many and there is no industry here to use the fruit for other productions (jam, juices etc.).

Right now we are in the mango season and almost every day we have some. A great time to travel and even in remote areas where finding food can be quite a mission we can get at least mangos.