Coconut

Growing up coconut was a major part of our lifestyle and it still is. We use coconut milk for cooking almost everything from rice to tropical fruits like mangoes, bananas and papayas. We also use coconut oil as lotion on our bodies and also apply it on our hair. Makes our hair really soft and we also believe it has healing effects. When we have headaches we drizzle it in the middle top part of our heads and believe has curing effects. We are fully coconut people and you could never separate coastal people from their coconut, it’s like separating an American from cheese.

But for our generation which most of us went to school, we became manipulated and made to believe that everything must be scientifically proven in order
to be accepted that it really works. Until recently science used to disregard all home or herbal treatments. They thought they are just myths because they have not been scientifically tested. Of course our ancestors did not have any labs and this knowledge was passed on just verbally without any proper explanation. We really underestimated the knowledge of our forefathers and ancestors, the things they were able to achieve without laboratories or any scientific instrument…. amazing! So it is clear there is a way to explore and know about many things without a modern scientific lab.

I also read online that there were some early studies done by scientists that gave out misleading results, which misguided people leading to negative campaign on coconut.

So as a result we did not like using coconut oil. First because there was no scientific proof that it's good for us. Secondly coconut oil is cheap because it is produced locally; it’s also very easy to produce your own coconut oil at home. Coconut has a strong smell (which I like), when you apply it anyone near you could smell it and the first thing in their minds is that you are cheap, cannot even afford a ‘nicely perfumed modern’ body moisturizer.

I have learned that all the things my mum used say about coconut are actually true and have been scientifically proven to be. So now it’s back to the roots to take a careful look at all the traditions I used to ignore.