Crunch. Chin-dribbling juice, sweet-sharp flesh, perfumed innards – a cashew apple. The impact of sinking my teeth into one of these is immediate, explosive, reminiscent. But memories from when? And where? My big brother bred cashew trees in Tanzania to be more resistant to mildew. I don’t recall eating a cashew apple when I visited him, perhaps it wasn’t the season?

The memory evoked by the taste, texture and aroma seems to go further back, perhaps as far as my early childhood in Ituk Mbang in what is now Akwa-Ibom State in Nigeria. To the ‘fifties when Nigeria was still a colony. Revd Joshua, the current welfare officer at Uzuakoli leprosy centre in Abia State, is surrounded by echoes of those days when he offers me cashew apples in 2018. Perhaps if I eat another I will get more insight into time and place. Mmm, maybe not. I stop at three.

People write books about taste or perfume. I feel that I am failing my readers in my search for words or images to capture this cashew apple. My internal thesaurus offers no clues, no low-hanging fruitful words, like the ripening mangoes which appear to drip from their trees at this time of year. Any online thesaurus is out of reach, with no good internet connection until I get back to Lagos. I know, before I look, that I will not find the precise words there either.

This Pangolin has just made it out of its hiding place in time as I had to wait until I got back to Lagos to be able to upload a picture of anything with as many bytes a cashew apple. The usual message on my phone screen when I do try and get online in rural areas is: this site can’t be reached. Perhaps it is trying to tell me something about my quest for memory, perhaps I should leave well alone. That software-generated phrase will make a good theme/title for my next short story.

Oh, and the other thing I discover about cashew apples? – three are too many for my guts.