Coconut Tales

This was told to me by my father, and i shall use his first party narration .

“I grew up in tanjung karang, a small town near kuala selangor. My father used to loan small coconut plantation from some farmers, and arranged for workers to harvest, peel off and carry out the coconuts.

The collection workers will come early in the morning, and by 10am, they will be back with the first lot of peeled coconuts.
To peel off the coconuts, they will first poke a spike into the ground. Then, they will wrap a thick guni sack around their waist, like a cowboy jeans.
After that, they will poke the coconut onto the spike, and twist and turn the coconut to remove its husk. They will also use their waist (protected by the guni sack), to stop the spike from turning.
An expert can remove the husk in 5 seconds, but it is hard job. The pay is 2 dollars per 100 peeled coconuts.

Carting out the coconuts is hard work. They will pile up the coconuts, sometimes 200 to 300 of it, on their bicycles. Then push the bicycle out from the plantation to our house. When the path is muddy, they will help each other to push the bicycle thru the hard spots. But they have to be careful, as once they lost balance, all the coconuts will come crashing down, and they have to repile it again.
Rainy season is the best for me, as the irrigation canals between the coconut trees will be filled with shallow water, and the workers will use my father's sampan to bring out the coconuts.
My elder brother and i will wait for the workers to come out, pulling their sampan, and then both of us will jump into the sampan, and the workers will tow us along, and we get to enjoy our free ride.

The collected coconuts need to be processed, and it is done on a big barbeque stove in front of our house. The stove is divided into 3 sections.
The first section is used to dry the collected coconuts, which had been cut into halves. My brother and i will stack the coconuts, flesh side facing down. We must make sure we don't stack simply, and stack in such a way that the heat will be able to go into the flesh, to dry up the coconuts. This is done every evening after the day's collection is done.
The next morning, the workers will come around 5am, and they will start to remove the flesh from the coconuts in section 1. It will take them 1 to 2 hours to remove the flesh. After that, they will go off to the plantation.
My brother and i will then stack the coconuts again in section 2, as some of the flesh are still stuck in the shell.
We will also arrange the flesh in section 3, to be dried. Dried flesh are called “salai”, and sold by the guni sacks to middlemen, who will in turn sell it to factories.
“salai” are used to make coconut oil and other products. “

there, that's all i can remember, from what dad told me. Hope it is correct mostly, and feel free to correct me :-)