We all know the logo. We are all very familiar with the stickers on the bananas. The region I live in is home to Panama's major Chiquita banana plantations. From my house I can see the flat lands filled with bananas and the big Chiquita banana boat come in every friday to pick up a shipment of bananas. When I ride the bus to the regional capital I see fields and fields of bananas covered with blue bags. When I stay in Changuinola, I can hear the crop duster planes flying over. Occasionally a bus is stopped by the cables of bananas crossing the road.
The majority of these bananas are exported. People here eat bananas too, but mostly just the ones they grow in their farms. They say their own bananas taste better than the company bananas because they are organic. Here families survive eating bananas as the main carbohydrate source. The Ngobe word for banana, Mrö, also means food. But not ripe bananas. Boiled green bananas. Mmmmmm. Some times they even make banana balls, which are made by boiling green bananas, mashing them together into a meatloaf shape and wrapping them in banana leaves to take as a snack. Later you can slice the loaf like bread. Being here, I have grown to appreciate and love all the different types of boiled bananas. Often time in the states, we only know one type of banana. But there are so many different flavors and textures of banana.
Recently, Chiquita has had extra bananas, so they drive them around in a truck to the rural communities, trying to sell them at a low price. The truck arrives and the driver yells "banano, Banano, Banano".
When families have no bananas to harvest from their farm, they scrounge up whatever money they can find and buy a sack of bananas. Can you imagine buying a sack full of bananas? So lately we have had a plethora of chiquita banana stickers.
A few days ago, I saw a homemade kite, out of sticks and a plastic bag, held together with about 20 chiquita stickers.
The next day, my neighbor came over to tell me that his little brother had a bott fly in his head (this is a nasty little grub that grows in your skin after a fly lays its egg in your skin). I asked how they were going to get it out. He told me they were going to use a chiquita. I said "chiquita what" (chiquita also meaning something little in spanish). He said, no silly chiquita, you don't know what chiquita is? You know, the thing stuck to the banana? OOOOOOh. Then I understood, since often what is recommended is to put duck tape over the bite so the grub cant breath and dies and comes out of the skin. But I still was in amazement of the creative use of a chiquita banana.
