Palm Leaf Hat Story - Part 2

After about an hour of boat travel through the mangroves we reached "Hawaii" with its black sand.  The "barra" is long, but only a couple hundred yards wide, with Pacific on one side.  Palm harvesters, men and boys working alone or in pairs, leave before dawn in small boats to their harvesting spots.  The young man in this picture was 15 years old when I took this picture.  He said he had been gathering palm for 10 years.  He had a younger helper.  He said that good spots were hard find, so he went early, when it was still dark, to try and keep it a secret. 

The palm harvesters here are gathering palm near the mangrove swamps from palm trees that grow wild.  We hired a biologist to investigate palm growning and harvesting several years ago.  She learned that the palm growing in this coastal area is under pressure from ranchers, who are burning the palm trees to clear land for cattle grazing, and from developers building vacation homes. 

- Posted by Jimmy Pryor