Ba-na-na-na

On the 14th of July a few of us went on a little informal tour of the local banana plantation, owned by CDC / Del Monte, a company with a less-than-sparkling record when it comes to treatment of employees / the environment / etc. We had a friend whose brother works there, so he showed us around.

An older employee plants young banana trees:




Banana bunches are protected to some extent from bugs and foul weather by these plastic covers:




They have these tracks about 7 feet up in the air, on which they can put a little wheel thing for transporting the loads from place to place:




Here you can see the way it works. The wheel thingies have hooks to which short boards are attached, and from those are suspended the bunches of bananas.




Close-ups:






Hooking it up:




They put these divider things between the levels of bananas as they put them on the track rail, though I forget what the reasoning behind this is.





A plantation worker, paid $3 a day for a long and difficult job, looks for the next bunch of bananas to cut.