News from the Banana Republic

Before moving to Micronesia, I assumed that there was only one kind of banana: the kind you find on the supermarket shelves, Chiquitas. But now I've learned that there are dozens of varieties of bananas just on this little island.

They vary in size, color, taste and shape. There are tiny little yellow bananas which taste like candy. My favorite bananas are akatahn (pronounced AH-kah-chahn). They are medium sized. When they are ripe, their skin turns deep red and inside, the banana is yellow. Yummy.

Pohnpei's state banana is karat (pronounced kah-ROTCH). It is round, about the size of a baseball, dark red on the outside and dark yellow on the inside. It makes the best banana bread you have ever tasted. It also makes your pee bright neon yellow.

Last week at the market, we encountered a variety of banana we've never seen before. It was green with dark, burgundy veins running across the skin. We asked the shop owner what type it was, but she didn't know and she said the man who brought them in had never seen them before either. Later we looked in our banana book (yes, there is a banana book like some places have bird books or flower books) and it was nowhere to be found.

We bought the mystery bananas, of course. I like to think that this bunch of bananas is unique and grew on a now-extinct tree in an obscure corner of the island. Unfortunately, they didn't taste very good. Even after they got ripe they were bland, almost salty.

When I went home to the U.S. this summer, I found the supermarket bananas dull and boring. I've been spoiled by this cornucopia of bananas.