I'm Haunted By An African Banana

I’m Haunted by a Banana. I am not joking. I am literally haunted by a Malian banana from West Africa. Let me share the story.

It was sun rise in Sikasso and I was glad to get on the bus heading back to Bamako, the capital city of Mali. I was ecstatic to have a front seat this time,(The story of the bus trip at night, stuck in the back seat comes later) and by now I had tunnel vision because I was officially beginning my long three day journey home to be with Lynn and the boys. As Dr Phil would say; “I needed a soft place to land”. By the end of my research in rural Mali (and 3.5 weeks in Ivory Coast before hand), I was certainly having difficulty processing more information.

The Scenery on the Savanah was nice, though vegetation and people were sparse compared to Ivory Coast. In each village the bus picked up a woman with a chicken under her arm here, a few men with sacks of manioc there. Each village stop also produced dozens of young women and children who filled the windows and bus aisle shouting loudly to drown out the competition so they could sell the most munchies to us ravenous travelers. Actually, it is a great service, the only way to eat on the journey. I bought a small sack of peanuts and four bananas from one smiling and pleased young lady.

As I prepared to eat, I broke off one of the bananas from the bunch, and the tip opened up to expose the tasty snack inside, but it slipped, and I dropped it on to the aisle floor. The very aisle where chickens were sitting; where there was goat and sheep droppings carried in on shoes from every village. The isle was red with dirt and this “other debris” and the red dirt illuminated my yellow banana quite well. I picked up my banana, and sure enough, the exposed tip was covered with a surprise candy coating, compliments of the aisle floor.

What do I do with this banana now I thought? The people of Mali are the poorest people in the world. I looked at the dirty flesh of the banana, looked around to see eight pairs of eyes watching for the resolution to the “White Man Banana Show”. Should I throw the banana out entirely as I wanted to, or just break the dirty part off? I could not bring myself to throw out the whole banana, so I broke the dirty tip off and tossed it out the window on to the road. I looked around at the sets of eyes and knew instantly I had made the right choice. I could see all eight sets of eyes diverting their gaze into the village outside, now distracted by something more interesting.

So I sat back and began to enjoy my bananas. As I ate, I stared off into the sights of the village. I noticed an older man weaving between mud huts in his long robe. He climbed up the side of the road and continued to walk by the bus, but he unexpectedly stopped in his tracks. He noticed something on the road and bent down, picked it up, looked it over, and then put it in his mouth, and disappeared into the village. My jaw dropped open……. The old man just picked up my dirty little lump of banana off the road and eaten it. In all my years in Africa, I had never seen anything like this happen.

Poor- We can’t process the word poor, because we are the top 4% of the world in income. Mali is the bottom 1%. I began my day craving a soft place to land; I have a soft place to land. However, soft is not a word I would use to describe the life of any Malian I know, because they do not have any soft place.

To this day, every time I see a banana I am haunted by the image of what happened to my banana on my journey to my soft place. Just when I thought it was impossible to ram one more memory into my congested brain, God arranged room for one more essential memory of a Malian man and a banana.

I wish I had thrown the whole banana out the window. No! I wish I had thrown out the whole bunch.

Thank you for reminding me of why I am to love as Jesus loved. I’m afraid that this west African banana may continue to haunt me for the rest of my life, and it should.