a little off topic, but I have this facination with the banana trees

We eat a lot of bananas at Tumaini - Banana stew, banana soup and bananas for desert
and since we arrived I have seen and hundreds (maybe thousands) of
banana trees and they either have full bunches of bananas
or no bananas at all, so I walked around the compound to check out the 7 or 8 banana
trees we have here to see if I could figure it out....

These are my observations:

The bunch of bananas start as a huge purple flower on an equally huge stalk,

As the petals of the flower open they reveal row after
row of little tiny flat bananas,

the petals continue to spread and more rows of bananas are added

The bananas grow rounder and larger,

and when they turn yellow, they are ready for market.

(close up of the flower)

Now that I have the mystery of the bananas covered I will go back to blogging about Tumaini....
stay tuned