Bunches of Fun in Belize

July 16th

I may have just found a fun new little mini unit for school next year.  I'm sure my teaching partner is probably thinking to herself, "Oh great, what is Mindy up to now?!?!"  So for those that don't know, the theme of my classroom centers around monkeys.  They are one of my favorite wild animals partly because my grandma used to call me her little monkey.  I figured it was because I bounced all over the place and climbed on everything, the higher the better.  Well, we went on a tour that was so interesting and fun and plays right into my monkeys.  We learned all about bananas on a real banana plantation. I also should add we ate a lot of bananas that day.  So here we go . . . 

Did you know that a banana tree is not actually a tree? It is a plant and bananas are not a seasoned crop, they grow year round in the right climate, which of course one of is Belize.  However the bananas  in Belize go to the UK and Ireland.  The bananas in the U.S. come from somewhere else.  So my best discretion of a banana plant is kind of like a tulip bulb.  It's not really a bulb but sort of.  I say that because just like a tulip bulb really only produces one flower, same with a banana plant.  It only produces one bunch of bananas per plant and once that plant is done, a "daughter plant starts growing and it keeps producing daughter plants for about 10 year before they ar pulled and start over with new plants, but still only one bunch per plant and on per subsequent daughter plants.  It's crazy!!! So a plant produces a bunch of bananas and in the bunch there are hands of bananas, clusters of bananas and each individual banana is a finger.  Everything I thought I knew about bananas just went out the window.  I thought my students incorrectly.  Actually I had most of it correct, I just didn't know there were clusters in the mix.  Now I know.  The unfortunate part of the banana tour is I couldn't take that many pictures.  They are very considerate of protecting the privacy of their employees, but I will try to share as much as I can with what I have . . . 

This is a cool umbrella light fixture with the brand of bananas on it.  There are only 9 banana plantation owners in Belize, each owning several plantations of bananas.  

The flower of the banana plant sprouts up out of the middle of the plant and then eventually is top heavy and falls over.  You can kind of see the reddish color, which is the flower.  

You can see behind us the next stage of the flower.  The petals start to roll up and reveal the bananas and the flower starts looking smaller.  Each petal protects its emerging bananas, but there is a point when the workers come along and cut of the petals so the plant only focuses on a few sellable bananas.  

This is a flower that has been cut off and opened up for us to see the different layers.  It almost looks like layers of an onion. 

When the bananas are pruned and just waiting to the ripened stage, it takes about 8 weeks.  While its waiting and growing, they cover them I these bags to protect them and it also has a colored ribbon around it for their record keeping.  From the sprout stage of the plant to the banana harvesting of the plant it takes about 9 months.  Also, they recycle everything they can so you see lots of little composting piles between the plants.  They say off the top, 20% of the bananas that are harvested go directly into the composting because it doesn't make the class one or class two cut.  

You can kind of see the cable system in this picture.  They have a cable system that they hang the bananas on and then after about 25 or so bunches, someone literally plus them back to the processing plant where they are inspected, cleaned, weighed and boxed for shipping.  I don't have pictures of that because they wouldn't let us take pics in the processing plant.  These people work hard and there are very specialized jobs.  I certainly wouldn't want to wield some of the knives they have to use with out a lot of Band-aids.  We watched one worker teaching another how to box the bananas.  I mean how hard could that be to put bananas in a box, but when she showed us, I'm not sure I could do it.  My favorite part . . . I got to put stickers on the bananas, a true teacher I know.  😎

This is a cute little ornamental banana. 

These are the fresh banana chips they made us, but they aren't the sweet dried bananas we might think of in the States.  These are made with really green bananas, thinly sliced, deep fried and sprinkled with a little seasoned salt.  They were so good.  

We took home as many fresh bananas as we wanted. It was a yummy day!!!