Do you ever wonder where bananas in the supermarkets come from? I had the chance to see this first hand while I was living and working on a banana farm in Tenerife as a volunteer.
I always wanted to try volunteering as a way of slow travel, and it turned out to be an absolutely amazing experience. I got an entirely different perspective of life on the island which I couldn’t have had as a tourist. My boyfriend and I spent three weeks on a small banana farm near Las Galletas in the south of Tenerife doing some simple tasks, such as planting seeds, weeding, painting, and feeding the animals.
My favourite one was picking the bugs that eat the banana plants. Since it was an organic farm and no chemicals were used to deal with pests, some ingenious traps were being used instead. So we had to manually remove all bugs from the inside of cut off palm trunks placed on the ground to attract the bugs. Then we would feed them to the chickens, as nothing was going to waste on this farm. Even the water from the shower and the kitchen sink was being re-used to irrigate the plants.
It was super interesting to see how bananas grow from these weird looking flowers to the fruits we know and love. We slept in a camper among the banana palms, and the best thing was stepping out in the morning to see this lush green mini-jungle around you and feel the sweet smell of bananas.
