Coconuts, Machetes, and a glimpse of Texas

This past weekend, Kyra and I had a spontaneous weekend in Antigua.  It was delightful to thaw and dry out a bit (it's significantly warmer and drier), get out of my house arrest/recovery, and just spend a day and a half at a hostel calmly and sleepily writing our curriculum for the rest of the year on the rooftop terrace.   


We did, however, leave our blissful teacher planning/katharine napping time to go to the market and buy a coconut.  Usually, at least in Xela, when you buy a coconut "to go", they shave it down (by hacking all the bark off with a machete) so that you can easily drink the milk out of a straw (through a hole they hack into it) and when you're confident/daring enough to think that the milk is all gone, crack it open and eat it.  In Antigua, however, the precrack preparation is lacking, to say the least, and the coconut is mas grande.  This leads to adventures.

So, I'm going to rehash the story for you.  In the middle of the market, we (I) became suddenly passionate about wanting a coconut.  Somedays you really really want one.  So, I buy one from a lady who has a lot of coconuts and a machete.  I ask for it to go and she cuts a small hole and puts the straw inside.  When I ask for her to possibly shave it down so I can eat it, she looks at me like I'm a crazy pants and says she doesn't have time.  "Well," I think, "I have a pocket knife."

As we walked out, I realized that pocket knives don't work on coconuts.  Coconuts are hard.  Knives that fold are weak.  So, I asked a dude who cuts watermelon with a butcher knife if he could cut my coconut for 1Q.  After looking at me and realizing I was serious, he said the same thing I realized with the pocket knife: Coconuts are hard.  Butcher knives are weak.  He sent us "atras" to a mysterious dude with a machete. 

Atras was on the road between the tourist market and legit food market.  I was pretty sure that people who sell overpriced flutes to tourists don't carry machetes in their pockets.  Machetes are good self-defense, but not the type of self-defense you would use in the tourist market in Antigua.

So, we resorted to banging it on the wall.  A man across the street saw us banging it against the wall and asked if we needed a machete.  Why yes, yes we did.  He sold jewelry, thus didn't have a machete, but he walked to a truck down the road with a handful of hooligan-looking dudes around it and the truck (of course) had a machete.  The guy borrowed the machete and in the middle of the sidewalk started hacking away at this coconut with all his might.  Watching him work hard to open our coconut confirmed that the pocket knife and the butcher knife would have failed this operation.  Watching the woody remains of the coconut spread out on the unusually clean market sidewalks (because this is Antigua... the clean city) was simultaneously guilt producing and entertaining.  

After a while, the guy finished smacking our coconut to smitherings and we shared some with him and the machete compadre.   It was a good, festive moment where we all felt quite victorious of our little community's victory over the large, tasty coconut.  Then, Kyra and I left happily sharing our coconut and laughing about the ridiculousness of it all. We went to parque, with our pocket knife, and finished our happy treat sitting on the curb.  (Note: If you want to go to Antigua and not be asked to buy a lot of things, sit on the curb with a broken coconut and pocket knife - they will think you're crazy or just not see!) 

Moral of the story:  Sharing is caring.  And, if you go out of your comfort zone to ask strangers for machetes, they may just help you and you will have a lot of fun with it!

Then, later Sunday night, we had a brief time morph into Texas.  Laura is from Texas and, like all good Texans, was excited about the Mavericks game last night.  Her friends who are visiting are also from Texas, and like all excellent Texans, were really excited about the Mavericks game last night.  So, they invited us over to the house they rented to watch the Mavericks and eat cake and nachos.   House+couches+manicured lawn+boxed cake+frosting+moving screen with people on it (aka TV)=delightful bliss of culture shock.  When you add all the Texas spirit (and the fact that the Mavs did win), it is amazing.  Washington doesn't have much basketball following (case in point: we don't have a basketball team) so I entered a whole new world with these Texans. It was a fun new world...

GO MAVS!

And now, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for 2011 Championship hats and jerseys for the Heat... it's funny how many of the losing team winning apparel appears down here.