Luke's Tuesday

On Monday, I had an amazing experience with my friends. At this point of the trip, we were staying in the Jagua Hotel located in Cienfuegos. The hotel was extremely nice with a beautiful view and great food. Ivan, Nate, Seamus, James, and I were all hanging out at the pool when we suddenly felt the urge to find coconuts and crack them open. We scavenged the hotel grounds and eventually found four coconuts at the bottom of a large palm tree. Although the coconuts seemed a little dead,  we shook them and could hear the coconut water inside. We worked tirelessly banging the coconut on the concert to try and get the nut to crack. After a few methods Nate thought of a great idea to jam a rock into another to chissle a hole in the coconut. We succeed, the nut was open a we all tried the water and it tasted okay. A man then walked up to us and told us to follow him. He spoke little English but we followed him and he whipped out a machete and shimmied up a little tree and chopped seven coconuts off the tree. He then chopped them all up and one of the hotel staff members brought us straws. The coconuts were delishes and everyone was astonished at what had just happened. The "machete man" and we all called him introduced himself and told us his name was Eldabi. We asked Eldabi a couple of questions and he told us that as a child from Cuba, you learn how to cut coconuts down from Palm trees at a very young age. He also told us about how he used to be a boxer and how if you want to be good at something you need to practice it. This experience shared the welcoming community that Cuba offers to me. I cherish that moment that I had with my great friends and will remember it forever.

-Luke Reich