A Snap of Time..

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. "
Mother Teresa

To most people bananas are just a fruit, but to me they are much more. To me a banana is a reminder of poverty that people suffer from all over the world. In particularly the people I met last spring in the middle of a banana plantation in Honduras.
Last Spring, I went on a mission trip to Honduras. One day, while I was there our mission team went to a village called El Banano to take the people rice, beans, and flour. The bus we were on pulled off of the main highway onto a dirt road that lead deep into a forest of banana trees. I would have never guessed that there was civilization down this dirt road, but after a while the buss came upon a village. Shacks lined the dirt road. These shack were the people’s homes. They were made out of anything the people could find scrap metal, trees limbs, cardboard, and mud.

Our bus finally came to a stop in front of a small concrete block building painted in a pretty teal blue . Our group was ushered off the bus and into the church. The church was a one room building about the size of a small classroom. We stood at the front of the church ,and all the people, young and old, gathered in as tight as they could. People even hung in the windows to catch a glimpse of what was happening inside. They were all excited we had come. The children sat on the floor right in front of us. Many of the children didn’t have shoes ,but regardless of there circumstance they were all happy. We started the service with singing. We sang to them in English. They enthusiastically sang to us “If You Are Happy and You Know It” in Spanish. It seemed quite strange to me that people living in such circumstances could be happy but they were . They were very happy and thankful people

After the service, the women and girls of our group passed out suckers to the children. The children were very excited to get candy. Even an old lady who didn’t have any teeth even wanted candy. They would express their gratitude in Spanish ,but having no clue what they were saying, we would just smile and nod.
Outside of the church, the men from our group passed out the bags of rice, beans, and flour we had brought. The missionaries we were with told us that a family of six could eat off of that one gallon bags of rice for at least two weeks. The poor can make food last longer than we ever could. The people receiving the food were extremely thankful. Food is hard to come for these people. The men of the village work in the banana fields all day. The pay for this job is very little. They have about a sixth grade education; so this is probably the only job they could get. It is also a very dangerous job. There are extremely poisonous snakes that like to sleep in the banana clusters. If a man is bitten he will die because the hospital is very far away ,and even if he did make it to the hospital they usually don’t have antivenin. They live and die for bananas. The simple yellow fruit I take for granted.

One of the girls dropped her bag of bean and they spilt out all over the dirty road. If I would have dropped beans on the ground I would have just walked right over them ,but this girl stopped and picked up every single bean she had dropped. We stopped and help her pick them up . She thanked us ,and after every bean was picked up, she got on her bike and rode home. To these people every bean is precious.
After we passed out all the food we had brought, we loaded back on the bus and headed back to the mission compound. Passing all the shacks leaving them behind, the buss was silent the whole way back.
We’ll probably never met again. The people will forever be in my thoughts and prayers. They were no longer just faces but lives. People just like me suffering. They are not sure where there next meal will come form or if there will even be a next meal. All they have is each other and bananas.