How to eat a coconut

Hello all! Happy Easter (again)! How did you spend your Easter? I spent mine watching floats of Jesus pass by (complete with tuba music), nearly causing an inferno in a procession, getting stuck in a different procession, opening a coconut (which actually accounted for a significant time portion in this weekend), and melting under the hot, hot sun. Here’s a summary…

I should add the caveat before I continue, however, that in case you haven’t noticed, I have a tendency to exaggerate and tell stories with James Frey-esque levels of truthiness. If that Oprah book club reference is too dated, feel free to Wikipedia it. Also, after watching a Wikipedia-related TED Talk, I am pleased to declare my complete confidence in the Wikipedia world. I have come down off of my pedestal and support the responsible use of Wikipedia wholeheartedly. You can thank Jimmy Wales for this change of heart. I now feel kind of bad for vandalizing the Tila Tequila entry. Only kind of, though.

Back to Easter, which in Estelí does not include eggs, bunnies, or chocolates, but does include a wonderful delight known as the procession. Only later did this word become plural. After hearing much about the procession, we were invited by our neighbours to the Holy Thursday procession. Dressed in my Thursday best, we headed off to the procession at 8:00. When we got there, we were told that the procession would start at 9:00. We returned home. Still dressed in my Thursday best, we headed off to the actual procession at 9:00. This time, I was not disappointed. The first thing I noticed was the amount of people. I am a terrible estimator but I would say that there were well over one thousand, quite possibly nearing two thousand. The next thing I noticed (it was probably more of a tie, though) was the massive “float” being carried by about a dozen men. This “float” depicted Jesus praying on the hill, complete with paper maché Jesus, a young man dressed as an angel, ample fluorescent lighting, and a humming generator to power the lights. Behind this “float” (I say “float” and not float because there was no car involved at all. Unlike the wimpy Stampede floats, this was carried on the back of a dozen men.) was a large platform with a paper maché Mary. This was carried by a group of women. Before being able to notice any more, and believe me there was more, we bought some candles because everyone else was doing it and I have no ability to resist peer pressure. The procession was so crowded that I thought for sure that someone would get burned with all of the candles around. I took it upon myself to fulfill that role. Shortly after lighting my candle, I lost my focus and nearly burned Amy’s hair. Just after that, I didn’t get my candle-holding angles quite right and lit my candle’s wind-protection cardboard on fire. The young boy with us laughed at me and with that, I cut my losses, blew out the candle, kept on processing.

A few other procession observations are notable, mostly because I have never seen them before (though I haven’t ever really been in a procession). Firstly, the men holding up the “float” are surrounded by another group dressed in purple robes and black hooded caps with eye holes. They were scary. Secondly, apparently tubas make good procession music. Despite the somber tone of the whole affair, I couldn’t help but smile only because I find it incredibly difficult to take tubas seriously. You know that “wah, wah” sound a tuba makes? Picture that behind a group of thousands of people, some holding a “float”, some visible only through small eye holes. Also, I learned that procession routes change year to year. Our neighbours, only wanting to participate in a portion of the procession, ran up a few blocks after our initial contact with the procession, planning to catch the procession as it went by and spend some time at the front of the procession (maybe that’s the best spot?). Unfortunately, while this strategy would have been foolproof last year, the route changed this year, which left us sitting on someone’s stoop for about an hour before deciding to just go home. We did get another procession glimpse, though, as we passed through the procession on our way home (it was about six blocks from where we had been sitting. It would have taken about 2 hours to cover that distance. Processions are not about speed, apparently. The whole procession went from 9:00 PM until 2:00 AM. We stayed for about two hours. My faith isn’t that strong, apparently.)

So that was Thursday. It was a pretty extensive procession experience so, despite being invited, I figured I would skip Friday’s procession. Because of some fluke timing, though, I figured wrong, because although I had no desire to participate in the procession, I did have a need for money. As I walked to the bank machines, I heard more tuba music. That did not bode well. As I got to the bank, I saw that the front of the procession had just reached the bank. Not wanting to pull out a decent sum of money and then wade into a crowd of well over a thousand people, I decided to wait. And wait. And wait. Remember what I said about processions and speed? Good Friday processions are no different. In the time it took the six-block procession to clear from the bank area, I managed to take several pictures of sawdust paintings of the stations of the cross (which the procession very coolly parts around as it proceeds until the very last few people who destroy the display), take a ten block walk around the central part of town, listen to two stations of the cross, and witness about 20 minutes of the parade. All of the now familiar procession elements of the procession were there on Friday as well, although there were way more people, the real-person angel on the “float” had been changed into a real-person Mary Magdalene, and paper-maché Jesus on the hill became paper-maché Jesus carrying the cross. Purple folks were still purple and tuba players were still playing inappropriate rum-pum-pum music. Another delightful element of Friday’s procession was the vulture ice cream and hot dog vendors, trying to take advantage of people’s heat exhaustion and hunger (apparently the hot dog vendors didn’t study up on Good Friday because I am reasonably certain you can’t eat meat on Good Friday. Or maybe they did consider that and are sending a powerful message about hot dog meat content…). The ice cream vendors were quite funny because during the silent prayer time, all you could here was the constant, never-ending ringing of the ice cream bell.

Although these processions were special Easter events (I had no other encounters, but am told that there were two others on Saturday and Sunday), these processions also fit into a larger phenomenon in Estelí (and Nicaragua, I have been told) relating to the love of parades. Everything has a parade and/or is paraded down main street. Estelí is particularly parade-friendly because it has a clearly defined, relatively busy main street that almost seems tailor-made for parades. What gets paraded? Normally I have absolutely no idea, to be honest. I just see commotion and go take a look. Here’s what I normally see: The parade is led by a truck with balloons and loudspeakers that is driving incredibly slowly, setting the pace for the parade. An outrageous noise that is probably announcing the reason for the parade is being emitted from the loudspeakers but, like with the announcement cars, it is way too loud for me to understand it. Every once in a while there is some sort of princess-dressed girl and/or lady in the back of this truck (big pageant fans here. There was a pageant month in the newspaper from mid-February until mid-March.). Behind this truck is normally some sort of dance troupe, normally counting about two dozen young men and women dancing to whatever racket kids dance to these days. I don’t think that “troupe” is the right word, or has been the right word since the 1950s, but I can’t really think of the hip word at this point. These dancers are normally dancing to the music blaring from a second truck, right behind them. The tail end of the parade is then a high school marching band and/or drumline. Unless Hollywood has lied to me, drumline is absolutely the hip word for this. A few parade variations that I have seen include: a truck full of tigers, camels, and miniature horses replacing the high school band (the circus was in town), rabid political supporters replacing the dance troupe (a “counter-protest”, officially, but I can’t help but think that the love of parades played a role), and Movistar phone mascots, which are actually big blue rectangles, added in front of the dancers. I know what you are thinking. Who has a rectangle as a mascot? Movistar does. That’s why I have a Claro phone. They don’t have mascots.

In the final Easter weekend event, today (Sunday), we had invited some guests over for lunch. We decided to make satay chicken, pasta, salad, and coconut-rum balls for dessert. This all happened entirely uneventfully except for the fact that we needed coconut milk for the satay and coconut shavings for the balls. This meant buying coconuts. No problems so far. This also meant getting the milk out of the coconut and the meat out of the coconut as well. Herein lay a dilemma. Without many kitchen utensils, and certainly without a machete (those really, really scare me), here was our (Amy and I) incredibly lengthy process, without a word of exaggeration:
1. Debate about which tools to use to puncture the coconut (to get the milk out). Several tools are vetoed including: pocket knife (that would close and cut off a finger), rusty nail in the bathroom (see Wikipedia entry for: tetanus, causes of), fork (uselessly weak… kind of like me, really), and floppy knife. A screwdriver is suggested. No screwdriver is found.
2. We settle on clean, sterilized nail pulled out of the wall in the bedroom. We thoroughly clean said nail, put it under fire, bleach it, and repeat the process. We now have a puncturing instrument.
3. Debate on how to get the nail into the coconut. The obvious answer is the meat mallet. There is no further debate.
4. The nail is driven into the coconut. Getting the nail out should have been part of the debate, apparently. The pocket knife is used to successfully pry the nail out of the coconut.
5. Attempt #1 to get the milk out. We soon discover the need for an air hole. Steps three and 4 are repeated.
6. Attempt #2 to get the milk out. We have a slow, slow drip but it is going about as fast as the processions so we take drastic actions, prying the holes wider with a large, two-tonged meat fork. This is entirely unsuccessful.
7. Major advance… we have found a screwdriver.
8. Holding the coconut with a set of tongs, the screwdriver is pounded into the coconut. The hissing sound is a welcome sound.
9. We successfully pour the milk out of coconut #1.
10. Having found the appropriate milking method, we repeat steps 8 and 9 with coconuts 2 and 3.
11. With three milked coconuts in hand, we consider how to get the coconuts open to reveal the meat. We try the aforementioned floppy knife. Even with a meat mallet pounding it, that knife is useless.
12. We are worried about breaking the countertop so we move outside.
13. We decide to slam the nail back into the coconut. There was really no rationale for this step. It is an entirely extraneous step (as is the case with well over half of these, I imagine).
14. We discuss our progress and realize that while all other tools have proven borderline useless, we do have one tool that has yet to fail us: the meat mallet. We decide to just forego all other tools and pound the coconut with the meat mallet.
15. Success! Who knew? Coconut flies about our back patio. We commit to washing the coconut before using it.
16. We realize that there is a fine layer of skin remaining on the coconut. It unfortunately cannot be removed with a meat mallet.
17. We spend about an hour whittling the skin off of the coconut with the useless kitchen knife and a pocket knife. Peeling coconuts sucks. How I didn’t lose a finger is completely beyond me.
18. We have delicious, peeled chunks of fresh coconut. We rejoice.
19. We reread the recipe and realize that it doesn’t call for “delicious, peeled chunks”, but flaked coconut. We are tired and do not feel safe using knifes.
20. Pretending that they are coffee beans that can just be ground, we throw the coconut chunks into the blender. Success! We haven’t felt this happy since we found the screwdriver!
21. Flaked coconut abounds (and still does). Our entire kitchen, back patio, side patio, and dining room are covered in coconut chunks, flakes, shells, and goop. We curse at the mess that we have to clean.

If any of this sounds unbelievable, I invite you to peruse the photo diary and video journal below. The first photo was taken at 4:16 PM and the last one (the blender) at 5:44 PM. All of this for three coconuts. Pay close attention to the sheer number of tools in each picture and video. Every one of those was involved in the process at some point.

I spent a long time trying to load these pictures and videos and they would not load. I will try tomorrow because they are so awesome.

The final result, though, was delicious, continues to be delicious (yay leftovers!), and marks the end of this blog entry. Happy Easter!