Hats off to Ecuador
Visitors to agro exhibition offer to buy eye-catching head gear
SERDANG: It was an agriculture show with lots of produce on display but the item that stole the show were Panama hats.
Staff of the Ecuadorian Embassy, manning a booth at the Malaysia Agriculture, Horticulture and Agrotourism International Show (Maha 2012) opened by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak yesterday, proved to be a hit with their eyecatching hats.
The booth had on display a variety of products such as banana chips and chocolates (banana is the top produce of the Latin American republic), but no prizes for guessing what everybody wanted.
“People were asking us to sell them our Panama hats! We could not do so because all our products here are just for display for visitors to learn about Ecuadorian culture,” said the embassy’s Third Secretary Manuela Fernandez de Cordova.
She said despite the name “Panama hat”, the hats were in fact Ecuadorian in origin and were hand-woven with toquilla straw native to the country.
In its maiden participation at the exhibition, Ecuador also displayed its Tagua tree jewellery carved from an Amazonian tree to look almost like ivory.
“We had a lot of enquiries about these too, with several people interested to bring these into Malaysia to sell,’’ she quipped.
It was also the first time for the Fijian High Commission to display the country’s products in the exhibition, with its national drink Yaqona being the main subject of curiosity.
Served in polished half coconut shells from a huge wooden bowl, murky brown drink made from the roots of the Yaqona tree had visitors queuing up to have a taste.
Najib urged those in the agriculture sector to be innovative.
He said the Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Ministry must inspire a new mindset on how to use innovative ways and harness proper technology to multiply yield.
“If people come and not bring back something new to think about, then I don’t think we have achieved our objective in organising an event of this scale,” he said when launching the exhibition.