Coconut, the wonder fruit - Nostalgia !
An article in BBC News on line saying coconut is a wonder fruit has brought up a lump in my throat. As kids, we used to love watching coconut climbers doing their job. I would say they were the early Nadian Comanecans.The global public had to wait till 1976 Montreal Olympics, to get an acrobat exhibit the coordination and aesthetic beauty of coconut tree climbing in the form of Nadia Comaneci. We tried to emulate the free style method of the climbers but ended up with bruise marks on our chests, calf muscles and inner thighs. The higher our freehand climb took us, deeper were the bruises as we used to "give up" in exhaustion and hug the tree dearly to slow down the fall. The payment for the climbers was partly cash and partly in kind - it was related to the number of trees climbed and not related the yield. So in summer months, the cost per tree comes down as the yield is much more. In the lean months, it was a tug of war between grandma and the climbers as th