Cannelle

A far more pleasurable experience than I was initially expecting. Yes, pleasurable. Man was made to do things with his hands and embrace nature, it even helps to battle depression, or so they say. We were slightly bullied into doing it to help out some mates of the people I'm now living with. This got things off to the wrong start for me, since when do you force your friends into doing free manual labour to be able to then make money out of something? Err, you don't. You just don't. Fortunately the experience was something rare, unique and worth getting into - so far I've never met anyone who has told me they have harvested cinnamon.

We gathered around the table with drinks and started tapping away. Once the branches of the cinnamon tree are cut, firstly you scratch off the first layer of bark, then tap on the wood, there is an orange brown layer which is the cinnamon, the harder wood of the tree underneath. You tap to separate the cinnamon from the wood and then slide a knife underneath, tap a bit more, edge the knife in further, tap again and repeat until you have teased off a section of cinnamon. Then section off the next and start again. The pleasant tone that the wood tapping made and the fun and challenging process of easing the layer of 'cannelle' from the branch was satisfyingly fun. It was so fun it was annoying that we were too many per piece of wood stump and necessary tools.

It's good to do things with your hands.

I took some uninspired photos and will be packing my souvenir cinnamon with me when I leave. Maybe one day when I have a garden I'll grown my own cannelle and in times of stress I'll harvest, tap and tease off to be able to unwind.