Field Trip part 3

The bananas!  We couldn't take pics inside the plant but we could out in the fields.  Here's a shoot coming out.  The bananas will grow inside that thing.

After the bananas are cut the plant is cut down, but a new growth is starting even before then, it's a continuous process!

Here's the banana after the shoot has come out but before the bananas are very large.  You can see the reddish thing hanging at the bottom, they cut that off and sell it in the grocery store here.  I've never eaten it though.  Shortly after this point they put a blue bag on each bunch (the entire thing is called a bunch).  The bag protects from bugs, birds and also black spots.

A man wearing a special padded board stands under the bunch while another man chops off the stalk.  The bunch falls onto the board and he carries it over to where another man is read to load it onto the chain to be carried to the processing building.  While the man is carrying the bananas, the other man chops the whole banana plant down.

This man stands with the chains and helps hook up the bananas to the pulley system.  Notice his shirt!  it's stained because the banana plant's sap dyes everything black!!

Here's a bunch ready to be sent to the processing plant, notice the sponge on top.  That is because the sap that stained his shirt can drip down and stain the bananas.  And we all know that we have no desire to eat a banana that is stained.  No matter how natural that might be.

I don't have a photo but the thing that jumped out at me were these men's feet.  They were barefoot.  Their feet were dirty and rough and calloused and very much spread out.  My feet don't know that kind of labor.  And they labor so hard for so little.  Be thankful for those that work so hard to give you your bananas!!