The Banana Boat song in Tonga

Four senior missionaries, two machetes, one dim flickering flashlight, a cell phone with no coverage-not even SOS, in the jungle, at night, in Tonga looking for bananas…what could possibly go wrong?  
I guess I should back up to the beginning.  I was studying my Unshaken at the kitchen table when I heard a knock at the door, more like a pounding on the door. 
The pounding reminded me of my University days when Bubba would come pounding on my door at 10 p.m. and wanted me to drive him from the dorms downtown to go get a triple-decker Wendy burger.  
I go to the door half expecting Bubba, but instead, it is my two neighbor senior missionaries, each holding a machete and a wild look in their eyes.  
My first thought is “There must be a lot of pressure to get baptisms here on the island.”  
They blurt out, “We are going on a hunt for bananas, and we need your truck.”  This sounds vaguely familiar. 
We are taught to be very forgiving, accommodating, patient, long suffering and full of charity.  I know!  Really!  You would hardly recognize me.  
So, I don’t slam the door in their face.  I am thinking they must have a flat tire on their car since there are more potholes per capita in Tonga than anywhere in the world, including San Juan County. 
“Okay.  Settle down we have a few bananas that you can have.”  
“No!  We are going to harvest some in the jungle.  We have machetes!”  
They hold them up in case I hadn’t noticed that there were two machete-wielding wild-eyed senior missionaries standing on my doorstep. 
“We are going to invite the dentist too.”  He is another missionary.  
If I am going into the jungle at night to harvest bananas with a machete, a dentist is not my first choice.  
One of the big rugby players that chant their haka every day I think would be a much better choice. 
So we drive to the jungle, which conveniently is a block from where I live, and we open a gate and hop a fence.  When I say hop a fence, I mean it takes three of us to hold the wire down and help each other get across the barbed wire fence without tipping over or pulling a muscle or tearing our standard missionary dress slacks.  
One Elder can’t lift his leg high enough, so we really lean our ample full girth onto the fence wire to help him clear the strand of wire ten inches off the ground.  I knew we should have brought the haka yelling rugby player. 
We finally find a tree with ripe bananas and as the neophyte (not Nephite) I am given the ceremonial machete and told to cut the bananas off the tree.  
I suggest we do a haka, but they just look at me like I am crazy.  Which really amuses me, since we could have stopped at the corner fruit stand and bought all the bananas we want for about one American dollar. 
Remember the Harry Belafonte song, Banana Boat, “Stack banana ‘til the morning come…daylight come and we wanna go home.”  
In the deep recesses of my cerebral cortex the rhythm and words say, “A beautiful bunch of ripe banana…Hide the deadly black tarantula…daylight come and we wanna go home.” 
We cut and stack bananas and then head back to the truck triumphant in our quest to bring ripe bananas back to our tribe.  
Home seems like a really good place to be when it is dark and you are in the jungle with a flickering flashlight hearing noises and seeing large, very large, flying fruit bats silhouetted against the super moon…daylight come and we wanna go home.   
The primeval hunter-gather instincts are strong and I really want to chant out a haka as I arrive home proud to show my too kind and loving wife that I can provide food even here in the jungle.