Journey to Banana Island

I am one of those people who has always been intrigued by the thought of living on a small little island...I remember watching Swiss Family Robinson when I was a little girl and imagining what it would be like to live on an island in the middle of nowhere (and I really wanted a house up in the trees like the one they had :) I have never actually been on a deserted island (well, except for those bird sanctuaries in Hawaii, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't count!)


Banana Island isn't exactly a deserted island..there are about two hundred people who live in the village there...but it was quite secluded and peaceful. We had to take a boat ride to get to the island, which was a wooden boat with a motor thrown in the back...they had to scoop the water out of the bottom of the boat before we got in...thankfully it didn't sink :)

 When we arrived on Banana Island, one of the guys from the boat took us through the village and then led us to the "guest house," where we could relax and enjoy the beach. The Africans there told us that it was the cheapest guest house and reassured "a white man lives here" (I guess they thought we would be more apt to pick the place that had the white people lol). We decided to explore a bit more before settling down on the beach and took a little walk through the trees to check out some of the other parts of the island. Eventually, we came back to the first guest house, which seemed to have the nicest beach.

When we got back, we were greeted by "the white man" that the Africans had referred to. His name was Gregory and he was from Greece. He invited us to sit and have a cup of coffee, which we thanked him for. Later, we were joined by his girlfriend, who was visiting from London. They were a neat couple and I was intrigued by their simple life of living on this island and running a guest house. I asked if they ever left the island to go into the city, to which they responded that they only went into the city when they desperately needed to. They preferred the peaceful, calm lifestyle of the island.


After chatting about Sierra Leone, life on an island (vs life on a ship), and a bunch of other things, Greg announced that he needed to leave to go fishing since we would be eating lunch at the guest house. So, he set out with one of his workers and the rest of us collected our things and walked over to the beach. The beach was a little rocky, so we couldn't swim much, but it was ideal for laying out and reading a book, so that's exactly what I did.

 We had some nice beach time and a couple hours later, Gregory came back in all his gear with some fish (they weren't doing the traditional fishing...they wore their scuba gear and speared the fish)...we had a nice lunch of fish and rice. Afterwards, we hung out in the hammocks under the shade for a little bit and then rejoined some of the others in our group and decided to head back to the boat (they had given us a set time for the boat ride back)...the boat wasn't ready for us and the man who had brought us told us it would take another two hours. He had gotten in an argument with his colleague who had helped to bring us to the island and apparently wasn't paying him what he wanted. We had alredy paid for our ride over and I didn't want to deal with his shenanigans, so after talking with him a bit, we decided to take a different boat back (thankfully we had only paid a one-way fare).


When we reached the other side, we came across two white men and found out that they were Christian missionaries and one of them was a nurse interested in helping out on the ship. We gave him the number to the ship and jumped into our "poda-poda" (aka minibus) for the hour and a half ride back to the ship.


As crazy as the city is, there was a part of me that was happy to be back. I definitely enjoyed a day on the island...I would love to go back and even spend the night in one of the guest house huts. But, after seeing what a quiet little semi-deserted island is really like, I don't think that I could actually see myself living there...unless of course it came with a house up in the trees :)

Gotta have some bananas on Banana Island!