Banana Blog | National Banana Day
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By
Ben Langdon
@benlangdonphoto
I have it on good authority that a couple of days ago it was National Banana Day and it got me thinking about a possible banana blog.
You can’t go far in Africa with out seeing bananas. Before I first went I never knew there were so many different types. In fact, a bit of googling tells me there are approximately 1,000 types of banana in the world, but most are unpalatable. I remember when I ate my first banana in Kenya. It was much smaller than the ones I was used to. Wow, I was blown away by the flavour, something that the bananas we buy in supermarkets in the UK have lost, or maybe they never really had it in the first place.
Did you know that there are some bananas that you can cook too? Boiled and pounded East African Highland cooking bananas form a staple dish in many Africa countries, ‘Matoke’. I love this fact too (especially for my Uganda friends): Uganda has the highest per person banana consumption in the world! Ugandans eat around 500 pounds of banana per person per year. Aggrey is this true?
It doesn’t stop there though because the banana tree also has many uses across Africa, and so in celebration of our favourite yellow fruit I wanted to share a few banana photographs from my travels around Africa.
If you have any banana stories then we would love to hear in the comments section below. Go on, someone must have a banana story?!
Above: Here a farmer is looking up at a bunch of bananas growing in a tree, Kenya.
Above: An early morning shippment of bananas being off loaded on the side of the road in Tanzania.
Above: Bananas being loaded on to the back of a bicycle.
Above: You often see large bunches of bananas like this for sale in the markets. This market place is in Rwanda.
Above: Imagine not ever having to buy wrapping paper again! This lady is wrapping up some ground nuts in, you guessed it, a banana leaf!
Above: This farmer is using banana leaves as a base to dry his cocoa beans on in Ghana
Above: This lady in Uganda is cooking on a fuel efficient stove and in the forground is our favourite banana leaf being used to cover a pot and keep the spoon from getting dirty on the floor.
Above: This, believe it or not, is a drainpipe which has been carved from the trunk of a banana tree. Harvesting water from roofs is a really effective way of collecting water.
Above: Spot the banana in this photograph? Yes that’s right it’s being used to stop the water coming out of the container – genius!
So who wins for the best use of a banana/banana tree? Follow this link for some more fun facts about bananas.
Aggrey
True Ben