BUKO SKIES

A great number of people living in the province in Philippines depend almost entirely on what grows around them. The men, at a very young age learn to climb tall coconut palm trees opening "steps" with machetes in the trunks to help them escalate and grab the heavy fruits. Junior, one of Tonya's sons lives in a small farm on a mountain in the south of Panaon Island, Southern Leyte, where he is in charge of watches for crops of coconuts which are mostly exported to produce oil.

We went to visit Junior's farm and asked him, as he usually did when we saw coconut plantations, if we could have a "buko", an unripe coconut which has not yet hardened its pulp. Junior grabbed his machete and in his worn-out flip flops began to climb effortlessly a palm tree carrying a good cluster of large coconuts. When he got to the top, around 20 meters from the ground, he signaled us to get far from the tree and soon coconuts began to rain from so high above that they would leave dents in the ground.

There were 5 or 6 coconuts on the floor when Junior started to climb down the tree using the steps made on the trunk. As soon as he was off the tree he grabbed his machete again and began peeling the thick shell of each one with what he gave shape to a spoon which we then used -not before drinking all the water inside- to scrape the sweet, jelly-like pulp of the coconut.