For the last two months, I've been dreaming of strawberries. Every time I would pull out another tired apple or orange from the refrigerator, I would count down the weeks until I could start looking for strawberry stands on the side of the roads in Tashkent.
If I were in America, I could have strawberries any time I wanted to go down to Costco and get a five-pound tub of California-grown strawberries that tasted mostly like the real thing. I could also get mangoes, blueberries, pineapples, and pears any time of the year. Because America is the place where you can buy just about anything for money.
But here in Uzbekistan, summer fruit is only available in the summer. I've started to see some fruit out of season in the grocery store - mangoes for three dollars apiece, pineapples for eight, and strawberries flown all of the way from the US for some sort of price that I didn't even bother checking.
For the rest of the population who doesn't want to pay those prices for fruit that would be eaten by children in .30 seconds, we just have to wait for summer.
Two weeks ago the strawberry stands started popping up all over Tashkent. The road to the stable always has multiple stands, so we're able to stock up twice a week. At first they were kind of expensive, but I didn't really care if I spent thirty dollars a week on strawberries because it was the first fresh fruit in months. As soon as I'd bring another two-kilo bucket home, the children would descend on it like vultures, crowding around it while shoving strawberries in as fast as they could get them.
The price has now dropped to seventy-five cents a pound, and now the second wave of summer fruit has come on - cherries, apricots, and Framberries, a strawberry cultivar that tastes like a blend of strawberries and raspberries. Last week I had a four two-kilo pails lined up across my counter, and within two days they were all empty.
Before we leave Tashkent, I'll get to have all the summer fruit except pears, each wave of fruit gorged on until everyone is so sick of strawberries, apricots, cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines, raspberries, and melons that they don't want to look at them any more.
We're especially enjoying the fruit this year as next year we'll be back in America where fresh summer strawberries haven't thought about costing 75 cents a pound in the last two decades, and Framberries aren't found outside of high-end farmer's markets. I'm sure the children will enjoy the novelty of blueberries in January, but we're all going to miss the amazing fruit here in Tashkent. But for now, we're going to enjoy as much as we can.
