How I Learned Grating Coconut Meat

THOSE WERE TRYING TIMES, the time I learned grating coconut meat.

The rustic peace of Lupi, the town where I grew up was always disturbed by frequent encounters between the military and the revolutionary army. Harassments, it was the how the men from the detachment called these moments of gunfire exchanges. The evening trains sometimes were flagged down by unidentified persons perhaps because a wounded comrade had to be transported someplace where there was a hospital. Those were times when we children were often cautioned by our parents never to talk to strangers and never to catch dragonflies and beetles up in the pine trees.