Something is wrong with this picture

I bought bananas the other day on my walk home from work. This isn’t abnormal, I eat a lot of peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches here.

The bananas I bought.

They were being sold just down the street from my house, and were probably grown in a nearby backyard or possibly a banana grove a few kilometers away. I paid 100 MWK for these bananas – about 60 cents.

Buying the same amount of bananas in Canada – where bananas don’t grow in backyards and instead travel for hundreds and hundreds of kilometers to reach you – would cost about the same.

One of these prices isn’t right. And I didn’t get ripped off.

 

Note 1: I’m not judging anyone for buying bananas, I also buy them in Canada. I’m just pointing out that there’s something wrong with the picture.

Note 2: This is part of an ongoing series of posts about money in Malawi. If you missed the others, you can look here, here, and here.