¡Totuma!

Totuma is a Spanish word for "all-purpose water pouring device," something I have gotten to know very well from bucket baths. It´s essentially a halved, hollowed-out fruit that is extremely useful for transferring water. Since I´m moving into a house on my own soon, I decided it would be great to have some totumas of my own, preferibly ones that I myself had made.

So now, to show you the process, I thought I´d break it down, step by step.

Step 1: Choose your fruit.

Totumas are made from a fruit called calabazo. They can get pretty huge. The one here in the picture is about the size of a small child´s head. I spent months staring at these things growing right outside my window. Sadly, I had to wait a good long while before I pick one to use, because they are best when they´ve gotten nice and hard.

Step 2: Carefully cut in half with a machete.

Here, you can see my host dad cutting the fruit. This was after he had drawn a line across the middle of the fruit with the machete. I didn´t realize it until he had me try it myself, but some machetes have a serrated portion toward the middle of the blade. Perfect for cutting the calabazo!

Step 3: Remove guts Part 1.

My host dad used the machete to quarter the innards and remove them.

Step 4: Soften remaining guts by placing calabazo in a pot of boiling water.

If you cannot tell, that is a wood-burning stove fashioned from blocks of cement, an old grate, and dirt and stuff. Oh, we go hard out here. We go real hard.

Step 5: Remove guts Part 2.

After letting the calabazo cool for a while, my host dad gave me a piece of an old SPAM can and I went at those bad-boys for about 15 minutes until the innards were all scooped out and the inside of the bowl was basically smooth and clean. There were some stubborn pimple-like bumps, but for the most part, that bowl was clean.

Step 6: Let your almost-finished product dry in the sun.
To be safe, I put the totumas out in the sun every second it wasn´t raining.

Step 7: Personalize!

My host mom put my name on one of my totumas. It kind of looks like she wrote Micolas, but who would complain about something so nice?

Step 8: Behold!

Finished product. And of course, that´s only one of them. I got two bowls from my one calabazo. How awesome is that??