Merci, buko!

While most people complain about the searing heat these days, Bosing, my suki buko or coconut juice vendor across the University of San Carlos in Talamban, smiles even as he wipes the sweat on his brow with a face towel.

He packs his wares earlier now as all his buko, sweetened with a little condensed milk and sold at only P10 per cup, is  sold out by  mid-afternoon. It’s the cheapest and chunkiest buko juice in the area and it’s amazing how Bosing quickly pours all the juice from its original container, a recycled peanut butter jar, into a large  plastic  cup so that it fills it up just to the brim with not a drop spilled.

The makeshift table, chairs, picnic umbrella, and ice buckets that contain his juice packs, and trash bag  fit into his little pedal-powered tricycle. Like a magician, he can  quickly fold or hook them all into his service vehicle when he calls it a day.

The day’s weather is in fact always the best topic to start a conversation with a buko juice vendor before it levels up to the social weather. You can easily predict his mood according to the day’s temperature. When it’s hot, you know he’s going to be cool. But when it’s wet and cold, you expect him to be a bit cranky and hot-headed.

On rainy days, Bosing stays until dark hoping that his most loyal suki would come and finish his supply. I guess I am one of the few oddballs who would drink iced buko juice even when the weather is cold or when it’s getting dark.

Since I started avoiding softdrinks and powdered juices for health reasons, I  learned to love buko juice. I try to drink it every day now. When I’m not in campus, I buy from any of those roadside vendors that sell buko in the shell. They will open the coconut in front of you and serve it with or without a straw (the latter is for those too timid to be caught kissing and sucking a coconut).

When you have drunk the juice, the vendor will then break the coconut with a machete and scrape out the meat with a spoon or makeshift ladle cut out of the outer shell. It’s very much like how the botong or young coconut is prepared in the farm except that you are spared the deadly  risk of climbing the tree of life sans helmet or harness.

I never learned to climb a coconut tree to the top to be able to pluck the fruit of my adventure. It’s a survival skill those of us who have been living in the city never develop. I was amazed at how fast my childhood friends could climb a coconut tree. A friend onceclimbed  with a knife held between his teeth.

It’s a scene that would have shocked the Westerner with an eye for political correctness. But for us, it was no big deal. In those places or in those times, if you wanted to drink buko, you had to risk your life or limb for it. And you usually learned to do so  early as a child.

How convenient it is  for us, lazy urban weaklings, to just order or buy fresh buko neatly packed and premixed in disposable plastic cups nowadays. In some stalls, they mix buko with shaved ice, milk, pandan and other flavors in an electric blender. Once blended, they add tapioca or jelly, seal it in  plastic cups or a bottle, then punch a hole in the middle of the lid or cap for straw. That’s your fastfood frou frou coco.

Recently, everyone seems loco over coco. Madonna’s recent endorsement of coconut juice in the States has resulted in the popularity of “fresh” coco juice packed in bottle, can, or tetra pak. The sudden increase in demand for coconut products led to the revitalization of the Philippine coconut industry. As more and more people become health-conscious, fresh coconut juice is seen as a good alternative for softdrinks and powdered juices.

Still I prefer the jungle version which is to drink buko straight from the shell. You cut a hole with a knife then kiss, suck and scrape.

Last year, a friend who owns a farm brought us some coconuts while we were having an art workshop with his kids among the pupils at a café. There was no big knife available but I had my Swiss Army knife. The kids were all excited to drink the fresh buko juice so I tried so hard to punch a hole and cut the fruit with my little pocket knife, shifting from the blade to the tiny saw.

It was crude but it worked. And all because I used my coconut, which is to say I used my head.