Flying Trees and 123 Coconuts on My Deck

When he makes his rounds, one of the guards usually covers his head as he walks by our house because coconuts have a propensity to fall there. We put in a request that the coconuts be knocked down, but this request somehow morphed into the death warrant of two trees—three if you count the one they chopped down next door. Fortunately, we have lots of trees around our place, and I guess it's good to be safe. It was so strange to see an entire coconut tree flying away.

Some of these pictures were taken by Edel (used with permission), our guy at the Embassy who saves us from disasters time after time and makes sure we don't get knocked off by coconuts.

It was a lot of fun watching them remove the trees with a crane. Then they cut down the coconuts from the rest of the trees. There were SO MANY COCONUTS!! I couldn't bear to let them go to waste, so I hauled (and had help hauling) 123 coconuts up onto my deck to escape the clutches of the coconut crabs and ants.

Dennis, who helps run the Wellness Center here in Majuro, sold me this neat contraption that cores a green coconut so you can tip the milk out of it. However, it only worked well with a certain type of coconut; that is, you have to know the age of the coconut to determine the best way to eat it.

Therefore, I learned quite intimately the different stages of the coconut. This list is pulled from page 44 of Surviving Paradise by Peter Rudiak-Gould (a book I'd recommend to anyone interested in the Marshall Islands):

There were at least eleven words for coconut, specifying different stages of growth:

• kwalinni: just beginning to grow on the tree
• ubleb: larger but still immature
• ajin aulaklak: almost ready to drink
• uronni: ready to husk and drink
• mejoub: a bit too late to drink
• manbon: starting to get brown, with the meat starting to harden
• waini: ready to be husked and the meat removed
• tobolaar: fallen off the tree, starting to sprout
• iu: sprouted, with the spongy innards now edible
• debweiu: sprouted more, too late to eat the inside
• jokiae: turned into a coconut sapling, much too late to eat

Thank you, Peter, for this list; I was then able to ask a few of the Marshallese workers and guards if they could help me identify the uronni. They said that it was still okay to drink mejoub and on up to waini (waini still has some coconut milk left in it), so I took that to mean that I should at least try to harvest those too. That's how I ended up with 123 coconuts on my deck. I cored and drained about 30 uronni, and then found that it was ridiculously difficult to try to core the mejoub and especially the manbon.

Now, what to do with about 90 coconuts . . . My Marshallese teacher threw some away because the husks were compromised from the long fall onto the coral rocks, but there were still about 80 of them. She said that for the bigger and browner ones I could wait until they turned into waini, and then husk, scrape, and grate the meat out. Well, the ants were already forming a line, I wanted my deck back, and just husking one waini is a difficult chore, so I called up Kristen and asked if the Wellness Center wanted some . . . a lot of . . . coconuts. Dennis had a coconut husker, and they provide excellent healthy meals for the people to help them combat or prevent diabetes, so Kristen and her husband took about 70 of the coconuts. The rest are in a pile in our yard ripening.

I got about 3 gallons of coconut milk; some I froze in containers and others I made into popsicles. They were a little strong, but still tasty. I don't consider myself a coconut expert by any means, but I do have a great appreciation for this tree of life, as it is often called.

And I'm not the only one who appreciates the coconuts . . .