Cultural Perspective

 Coconuts

In the Philippines, coconuts are one of the most commonly grown crops alongside bananas and rice. My dad's family had owned a farm back home, he spent most of his childhood raising various farm animals and growing and harvesting various crops which his family owned. He often talked about how older boys would climb up the local coconut trees to harvest the coconuts by cutting them off the tree usually with a large traditional knife called a bolo knife. Once brought back down they would cut open the harvested coconuts and drink the water inside, then use a "kudkuran" which is a sharp metal coconut scraper to remove the meat within the coconut. Since the Philippines is quite abundant in coconuts, they have been incorporated into many national dishes or even turned into staple snacks. Even after the water and meat of the fruit was taken, no part of the coconut was wasted, the now empty coconut shells (if split into halves) would be used to polish the floor. This would be done by applying some sort of floor polish onto the ground, then standing on the rounded end of the coconut halves while moving across the floor until it was polished enough. The trunk of the coconut tree was also used as a building material for houses. This was common in the rural areas of the Philippines where houses were usually made from either concrete or various woods, and sometimes bamboo in the more traditional homes located further from the city area. Years later, my parents had brought this aspect of our culture back here in Canada to share stories to my brother and I. My dad had even built our very own kudkuran, which I constantly worry about accidentally running into one day.