How Many Bananas Can You Eat?

We have eaten a lot of good food on this trip and had a few unusual things, but the eating experience that most stands out is the amount of bananas they eat in Uganda. These guys must be the champion banana eaters of the universe.First of all, bananas grow everywhere, as do a lot of other nice fruits and vegetables. They have an abundance of produce growing everywhere and they also grow some really good coffee.But back to the bananas: I found out the hard way that when they set a large bowl of bananas in front of you, they expect you to eat the whole bunch. At breakfast one day there were about twenty bananas set in front of us in a large bowl and I thought they were for everyone to share. Much to my surprise, they expected me to eat all of them! No Way! I’m thinking, are they joking? Is this an example of their sense of humor?

So I ate my fill, about three bananas, along with the rest of the food. Later in the day we had a large lunch in a village. Again they set a ton of bananas in front of my plate. They mentioned somewhat firmly, that a Uganda person would eat all the bananas. I start stuffing bananas in my face, but I’m getting full, because there was a lot of other food. They say “eat more bananas, they are for you,” and I have my cheeks stuffed with banana and look like a chipmunk and I mumble “mmff hmnff mmfmfnh,” which means “I can’t eat any more” and they begin to ridicule me and say “You’re a Woman! Americans are wimps, you must eat more bananas!’ and they are hurling insults at me and I’m stuffing bananas down my pie hole and I am beginning to worry about my intestinal stability.

So I did my best and they let me off the hook and I finished the day having eaten nine bananas, which has to be a record for me, and I look back on that time with amusement and fear …