Opening Coconuts - For No Apparent Reason

Yesterday we went to Jason and Krista Corry's home. Jason and Krista are good friends in our ward, and their kids are right around Jaydn's age. They invited us over during the heat of the day so Jaydn could play on their blow-up water slide. Jaydn had a blast, and even caught some air a few times.

Children are resilient; even a flop like that is a brush-off for kids. I remember a 2 year-old on my mission who was running down the road at full speed when splat!--he fell flat on his face. He just got up and started running again, like nothing happened! Why can't we do that anymore?

Anyway, we just watched him go over and over and over and over . . . . Eventually, I got tired of watching. Most Samoan homes have tons of fallen coconuts on the grass. I asked Jason, "so, you gonna cut open a coconut?" I soon realized I asked the wrong question. Jason went inside, got his machete, and started chopping up coconuts as if they were attacking-space-aliens.

I just watched in amazement. I'd opened two so far in my life, but within 10 minutes Jason had slaughtered five. I soon realized that my simple question had tested his manhood, causing sharp pains of inner turmoil; Jason was showing me--and everyone else--that he could open coconuts, hooah!

But Jason wasn't done. So I offered to help, seeing that I had nothing to lose but my manhood if I didn't help. I chopped by myself:

The coconut was too wobbly. So, I offered to hold the coconut.

Then, I offered to chop.

We were cutting a lot; just not coconuts. After we were successful in getting the outer shell off, how were we going to cut through the core to get the juice and fruit out? Maybe use machete, ugh?

The final result was this:

And this:

And this:

They say that coconut water is the "cleanest water in Samoa." They're probably right.

Once we got the core cut open, we could eat the coconut. The result was this:

And this:


Lesson learned: never trust a palagi to open a coconut correctly. We like destroying things more than we like eating coconut.