Bananas!

Bananas…a simple fruit, yet somehow they were able to represent so much more in my hyper-reflective and emotional state that I was exhibiting during my 2 days of travel home from Nigeria. In Nigeria, bananas were small, green or black in color found in large bunches often looking less-than appealing and often acquired by happenstance-chance yet tasted soft, sweet, extra-banana-y and delightful…and people never eat just one!

While sitting in the Amsterdam airport, a cute couple in their early 70’s, presumably from Scandinavia (based on the language in which their newspaper was written) carefully took out a bag of 4 large, perfectly yellow bananas. Each took one and then they put the remaining 2 back in their bag for a later time. I feel these bananas illustrate a bigger truism. Many things in Nigeria aren’t packaged as attractively, planned as calculatedly or carried out with as much restraint, which can lead to frustrations, disappointments and no bananas when one wants them, but when the little boy clad in a torn shirt and flip flops walks by with a tray of bananas on his head just as late afternoon hunger begins to gnaw, those bananas couldn’t taste any more divine!