The Hard Way of Life in the Province| Climbing Mountain to Earn Money
I’m tired. Finding money on the mountain is so tiring. Though life in the province is so nice and very comforting, in return the way of life consumes a lot of time and strength. Also, it only earns a little not worth it of the hard work being spent. I’m so tired that it feels like crying. Like in every step you need to put a lot of strength before reaching your goal.
Today this will be my participation for #wednesdaywalk by @tattoodjay. It's been awhile since I posted here and I'm eager to share how my walk went with some a little bit of life struggle.
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It was yesterday in the morning when we climbed the mountain. The purpose was to check if there were still any coconut to sell. Every 3 months, the coconut tree should be harvested, either to sell it whole or to sell it as a copra already. Copra means drying the flesh of coconut and then selling it to bigger companies that create coconut oil. In the next post I’ll be talking about the process of creating copra. However this time, I’ll be talking about the kind of life we’d through before doing copra.
We reached the top, that’s the land which is owned by my parent’s wife. When we arrived
I was already exhausted from walking. The path was so slanted that when I walked my knees almost reached my face. Sometimes I even crawled, afraid that I might fall if ever I’d slip because the ground was wet. Not just the ground was wet, my whole body as well from my sweat. I took a deep breather as well because I felt like I couldn’t breathe from the walking.
Immediately, we collected the coconut to place in a single place so it’s easier for us to remove the husk. In doing copra, removing the husk is very effective since there’s no waste in every part of the flesh. We began working to finish the reason why we were there. Although the coconut fruits were quite a number, even if there were 3 of us, the 600 coconut fruits was not easy to handle. We finished half of its number and we decided to have lunch first. It’s almost 1 pm so we began eating the food we brought, canned goods and dried fish.
Unfortunately, we forgot to bring kitchen utensils like plates, spoons or glass. Obviously, if you’re in the mountains you have nowhere to go to get these utensils. Again, one of the parts of the coconut fruit was very helpful, not just for money but for any usage as well. And yeah, I used a coconut shell where the food was placed on it. Actually, not just for me but for most of us here.
One of us then broke the coconut fruit into two pieces. Again, that's what we do when doing copra, so the details will be in another post. Fast forward, I was tired of capturing photos. We finished placing the coconut into two pieces at a “tapahan”- (it’s like an oven to cook the flesh of coconut fruit but of course heated with a fire from firewood.) After that we decided to go home for now since it’s already afternoon. Actually it’s a little bit dark when I arrived home.
Thank you for reading
All content is my own unless otherwise noted
If images are being recycled, I just found it fit in my article.
ABOUT ME
Paul was born in Macrohon, Southern Leyte but currently living in Cahayag, San Francisco Southern Leyte. He graduated the course of a BS Mar-E or Bachelor of Science in Marine Engineering in 2019. Although writing is his passion so instead of sailing he decided on writing.
He writes occasionally about random stuff he would see in the outside world. He loves to express what he feels through writing because he's not good at speaking personally.
He also writes fictional stories and emotions because he thinks life matters. He is hoping that his words could reach someone who might be feeling down.
Join me and support me through my adventures not just to the world but also to the human minds not to hate being alive.
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