Green Bananas:

a phrase coined by Donald Batchelder in an essay he wrote about his time in Brazil. In the essay, he talks about how his encounter with green bananas revealed to him an enlightening piece of Brazilian perspective and culture. Over time, this phrase has come to stand for those rare cultural experiences, which, if pursued, provide a lens into another culture and our relationship to it.

Every now and then, someone in our group will look a little shell-shocked and say: "I just had a green banana." In other words: "I just had a really bizarre experience and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet."

We are asked to write about a couple of green bananas throughout the semester, and even though this one happened a while back, I thought I'd share it on here because I think it sheds some light on daily (or isolated) Nicaraguan experiences and my attempt to process through them. So here you go. My green banana:

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It was midway through brushing my teeth--right at that point where the saliva is building and begging for a way out--that I realized I didn’t know where to spit. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I would need to ask this question. Out of habit (and I suppose some cultural conditioning), I just assumed that I would spit where I always spit when I brush my teeth: in the sink. But seeing as there was no sink, I unexpectedly found myself at a loss for what to do.

So there I was, in the dirt-floor, no-electricity kitchen of my campo host family, stuck with a mouthful of toothpaste and no outlet in sight. In a panic, I surveyed my surroundings, looking for a solution to my current dilemma. I was frantically looking around when my host mom showed up at the doorway and stared--half sympathetically, half skeptically--at my distressed self. (Though it was pitch black, I was wearing my headlamp, making it a little difficult to remain low-profile.) It’s hard to imagine exactly what I looked like in that moment, but if I had to guess, I would say I vaguely resembled a deer in the headlights with a toothbrush lodged in its mouth.

In the midst of the chaos, this moment generously granted me the kind of word retrieval that only comes in the most desperate of situations. In a rare flash of brilliance, I looked at my mom and asked, as coherently as possible, “Dónde se escupe?” I have no idea when I learned the verb “to spit,” or how I managed to remember it, or even if I conjugated it correctly. But somehow my host mom understood me and, in response, motioned in the direction behind me. I turned around to follow her point, but all I saw was the table where, two hours earlier, I had helped her make tortillas. Certain that I had misunderstood, I looked back at my mom for clarification, only to find her still pointing at the same table. “There?” I mumbled incredulously, trying to keep the toothpaste in. She looked at me squarely and said, in all seriousness, “Yes, of course. The pigs eat that too.”

I had a flashback to dinner earlier that night, when my mom swept all of our food scraps off that table and gave them to the pigs. Unable to afford any more time with that mixture in my mouth, I just did as I was told and spat it all out onto the table in exasperation. Then I watched as my host mom “cleaned up” the mess in the same (seemingly ineffective) manner she had cleaned up our tortilla mess hours earlier: she threw some water on there and allowed the downward slope of the table to wash it all away, in the direction of the hole that had been cut in the wall for draining purposes. Sure enough, as the water flowed down the table, through the hole, and out the kitchen, I heard the pigs come running from their pen to consume my toothpaste slop. “See?” my mom said proudly. “They love it.”

I tried very hard in that moment to not appear as stunned as I felt, to act as if pigs always clean up my toothpaste mess and I had just had a brief memory lapse in this regard. In spite of my best efforts, however, I’m fairly certain my face indicated exactly how I felt: completely and utterly shocked... and to be quite honest, a little disgusted. I couldn’t get over the fact that I had just brushed my teeth on the same surface as I had used to made my dinner two hours earlier--and the same surface as I would likely use to make my breakfast the next morning.

Suddenly feeling a bit queasy, I climbed into bed.

Though I was entirely drained from the day--both physically and mentally--I couldn’t stop thinking about my tooth-brushing incident. I was embarrassed by my reaction of disgust and intrigued by how logical my host mom’s system of cleaning and hygiene seemed to her. It was in this period of exhausted reflection that I realized the cultural dissonance. In order to make sense of this situation, I needed to understand the fundamental values of our two very conflicting societies.

I come from a society that values, among its highest priorities, order. In every crevice of the United States one can find rules, regulations, and protocol written for the slightest procedures to ensure that everything operates in an orderly fashion. These regulations are especially important when health or well-being is in question (i.e. keeping food preparation separate from waste). Nicaragua, on the other hand, is a society that holds utility among its highest priorities. The question for a Nicaraguan is not, “How is this potentially harmful, and what procedure can we develop to fix that?” but rather, simply, “What can this be used for?” It’s a shift in thinking; one is preventative, the other is proactive. The difference between my host mother’s reaction to the situation and my reaction to the situation illuminates this distinction perfectly. Whereas I was concerned about the potential health implications of spitting on the same surface that is used for cooking, this seemed perfectly logical to my host mom. As far as she was concerned, the pigs would eat the leftovers of both, so why not use the same space and let them both drain to the pig’s trough? In her eyes, nothing--not even toothpaste spit--should have to go to waste.

As it turns out, we did prepare tortillas on that same surface the next morning. And in spite of my better judgment, I ate them. And I didn’t get sick. For me, this was my first lesson in relying less on regulations, and more on resourcefulness. Because you never know the potential value something holds until it is used for the unthinkable.

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A little follow-up note: as can only be in the case when you're in another culture, no matter which one it is, green bananas have happened on occasion. Some are less impactful than this one, but they all have all helped me understand Nicaragua a little better. This week (tomorrow), I head to El Salvador, where we'll learn a little about their revolutionary history and how it relates to that of Nicaragua. I'm sure my time in that country will have its share of cultural experiences. With regard to this trip, Aynn said (direct quote): "Get ready to turn yourselves inside out again." Not sure what that means? But I'll let you know when I get back next Friday. Thanks so much for keeping up with me! Love to you all.