• Submitted by: admin
• Caribbean
• Destinations
• Environment
• national
• Science and Technology
• Politics and Government
• 02 / 19 / 2009

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If someone asks any child of this Caribbean island what he knows about the royal palm, he will say without hesitations: it is our National Tree. But for me that I was also a boy - it is important to remember that the plant means much more.

I opened the eyes in a hut and that means that the walls and roof of my house were made of royal palm leaves.

Chencha, my mother, washed our scarce clothes in shallow pans, also made of royal palm and Mongo, my father, from time to time brought honeycombs in vessels of that type.

The royal palm also produced seeds to feed the pigs. We also use the vessels made of that tree to put the rice with black beans, lettuce salad, tomatooes, and yucca.

My mother used to make the cover of the delicious peanut cones with royal palm while her children pulled her skirt, crying of impatience, for the irritating smoke of the woody stove or due to the common habit of sobbing to obtain something.

Although my sisters can buy plastic brooms in any modern store at present, they must remember they swept the floor and the surroundings of the house with brooms made with the fibers of the clusters of the royal palms.

It is also imposible to forget that due to the lack of toys and more instructive hobbies, in many occasions my siblings and I went to slip down the ravine on a leaf of a royal palm.

(Tiempo21.cu)