Luna

I was waiting on the side of the road last week for my ride to work. Luna, this crazy old islander who lives across the street, was out mowing his yard. When I say mowing, I really mean he has a machete in one hand and a stick in the other and is swinging away with the machete to cut the grass. I watched him for several minutes and realized that he was able to cut the grass pretty evenly with this machete. It's not the first time I've seen this done. There are always guys using machetes along the road. It appeared they were always cutting down tall grass,  but Luna was trimming his grass. He likes it to stay around a "quarter" high. He actually carries around an American quarter and uses this on occasion to measure his grass. He says his quarter will be worth quite a bit one day. He talks about it so passionately, I almost believe him. Luna waits on the road in front of his house each morning to say hi to us. Even though I cannot understand most of the things he says to me, it always makes me smile to see him each morning.

Yesterday, when I arrived to the side of the road he offered me some bamboo. I told him I had already eaten breakfast (mostly as a joke), but he proceeded to eat it. When he saw the slightly surprised look on my face, he told me it was sugar cane. Of course I had to google it as soon as I got to work. Evidently it is in the same family of grass, however bamboo is too hard for us to eat with our teeth. Sugar cane, on the other hand, can be eaten right off the stalk. This has been his favorite food since he was a kid, unless he was in trouble. Then the sugar cane became a whip. He said that islanders grow up with sugar on their bottom and on their teeth. That is how you know if someone is from the island or not, he tells me. Today, I introduced him to Oreos.