Mangoes In The Mail
Maggie Dineen, 137 TESS
April 18, 2026
Chiang Mai, Thailand
I recently arrived at my permanent site placement in Chiang Mai, a northern province in Thailand. I will be here for the next two years, which gives me plenty of time to write about my new host family, the kids at my school, and the Buddhist monk who sells coffee out of a van.
But first, I would like to process the time I spent with my Suphanburi host family. It will be a post that they will never read, and one I will never finish, since my feelings for them go beyond what any language can express.
The photo above was captured on my last night with my host family. We ate Thai hamburgers, exchanged gifts, and drank until my mom couldn't keep her head up. As I smiled for this photo, I choked on bittersweet tears. Who knew that in just three months, I could love a family so fully?
When I first arrived, I didn't know how to say yes and no in Thai—that's how little I knew. But over the next three months, they learned how to understand my accent, and I learned what it meant to live with a tight-knit family.
Nam Jai is a concept woven into the social fabric of Thailand. The phrase literally means "water from the heart". With water at the center of the Thai agricultural lifestyle, it is a lifesource for many. So, to have a heart filled with water means to be an abundantly generous person.
One night, I was practicing Thai with my host sister. I had just learned fruit vocabulary and how to say "the best". Offhandedly, I said "I like strawberries the best". The next day, she brought me fresh strawberries (I tried showing my family Nutella + strawberry on toast, but they wouldn't try it). From that moment on, my host siblings gifted me strawberry milk, smoothies, ice cream —you name it.
It wasn't the gifts that made me feel part of the family; it was the effort to make sure it was something I liked that made me feel understood, despite the language barrier.
These small acts of generosity continued —from my host sister giving me long athletic shorts because she knew I liked to work out, to my mom preparing extra food that didn't include fish. While I try to practice generosity in my own life, my host family taught me what it means to have nam jai within a family setting. By the end of my time with them, I was helping my mom in her corner store, watching my brother and sister fly the drone over the rice fields, and bringing my host dad steamed buns from the market.
Up until our last moments together, my host family made me feel loved. My mom asked me to send my new address so she could send mangoes from the farm. I knew then that our relationship wouldn’t end when I left. A few weeks later and 13 hours apart, the mangoes arrived in the mail.
At the beginning of PST, another volunteer lent me Going Home: Jesus and Buddha As Brothers by Thich Nhat Hanh. While the book in essence talks about the similarities between Christianity and Buddhism, it also defines home in a way I had never considered.
It made me think about what home means to me.
Hanh writes, "when we are mindful, fully living each moment of our daily lives, we may realize that everyone and everything around us is our home. Isn't it true that the air we breathe is our home, that the blue sky, the rivers, the mountains, the people around us, the trees, and the animals are our home?".¹
Before arriving in Thailand, I grieved the home I left behind, my friends that surrounded me intimately, the food that comforted me, and the language that I understood fully; however, Hanh implores a new perspective.
Physical location, people, food, nor language is an exhaustive definition of home. For me, I feel most at home when I take inventory of what is around me, find joy in trying new things, and maintain personal hobbies. It is just up to me to be mindful of it all.
So, when the sour green and sweet yellow mangoes arrived in the mail, I was reminded of the home I built in Suphanburi. I remembered sitting on my family’s blue tiled porch, journaling about my long day learning Thai, listening to the bird song in the nearby trees.
Home surrounds me, I just need to take my own advice: take inventory of what is around me, embrace new experiences, and build self care into my schedule. Who knew mangoes could hold such meaning in my life.
1. Hanh, Nhat Thich. Going Home: Jesus and Buddha As Brothers. Penguin Publishing Group, 1999. 