This article originally appeared in The Miami Times in July 2025 and was written by Marlon A. Hill.
It all started with a spontaneous and cheeky Facebook post at the beginning of the summer:
“Job Posting: Will pick mangoes for FREE. Highly professional and efficient.”
I was not fully prepared for what came next. I was inundated with offers from friends and family to visit their humble collection of mango trees scattered across Miami-Dade County. Usually at dusk when the weather was more pleasing, I’d venture out to mango land. Thus “We The People Mango Services” was born. After all, every mango tree needs a community friend.
In the tropical heart of Miami’s summer season, when the sun lingers a little longer and hotter and the air hangs ripe with possibility, something beautiful unfolds among our local foliage: mangoes blush with a red and golden glow, hung on branches heavy with promise. For me, this mango season has sparked not just a harvest, but a quiet revolution in how we can show up for one another. I call it mango as a community currency with no exchange rate.
During each visit with friends, there was no money exchanged, no formal agreements — just a willing hand and shared joy. For some, their deathly fear of lizards, iguanas and other crawling neighbors of nature was enough to put me on speed dial. For others, the sheer volume of mangoes, battles with squirrels or an aversion to rotten fruit were sufficient reasons to welcome my farmer hand.
From these community harvests, we gifted mangoes to others in the community: co-workers, elders, children, newcomers and friends we have not connected with in months and less so during the pandemic. And with every handoff of a sun-warmed fruit, something extraordinary happened: We connected. We slowed down. We exchanged smiles and stories of our mutual love.
In a world often overrun with transactional exchanges, mangoes remind us that generosity can be deeply simple and wildly powerful. A mango is never just a mango — it’s a gesture. A story. A smile between strangers. A memory waiting to be made. To pick one from a tree, still sticky with sap, and offer it freely is to say, “I see you. You matter. Let’s share this moment.”
There’s something anciently and soulfully special about this fruit. It grows effortlessly in our Caribbean and South Florida yards, provided by nature with abundance. Yet we rarely stop to honor its magic. Mangoes feed not just the body but the spirit. They ask nothing of us except to be gathered and shared. In doing so, they become symbols of reciprocity, humility and joy.
The act of harvesting together is sacred, too. It slows us down, requires cooperation, and invites storytelling. Someone always has a memory to share — the mango tree planted by a grandfather, the childhood games played beneath its shade, the recipe passed down through generations, the joy from the mango juice dripping down the crease of your palm to your elbow. These conversations, woven between branches and over buckets of fruit, root us deeper in the soil of our shared humanity.
This experiment of mine has grown into a movement, one sweet exchange at a time. As we turn mangoes into meals, gifts and gestures of connection, we rewrite what community care can look like. We build new traditions. We learn that sometimes the most radical thing we can do is offer something beautiful and ask nothing in return. For the people, by the people, of the people.
For this summer and other seasons to come, let’s remember to ignore the noise of the world and extend the open door of this gift of nature. Because when we share mangoes, we share more than fruit — we share love, belonging and the delicious truth that we are all connected.
To read the original blog post in The Miami Times, click here.
