by Anne C., 15 & Emily L., 15
How long does it take to eat a potato?
How long does it take to eat a banana?
Pisan Zapra.
That’s how long it takes to eat a banana,
and as for the potato,
the world may never know.
Now you may ask,
why a banana?
And I will reply,
I don’t know.
Maybe the people who speak Malay like bananas.
Maybe they have a secret obsession with them.
Maybe there was that one person who was curious,
that one person who submitted
Pisan Zapra
to a dictionary.
Or maybe it was a culture-wide thing—
the banana obsession—the fuel for their existence,
the burning question, the acute desire
to describe exactly how long it takes to eat a banana
So how long does it take? You will ask me
and I will never change my answer, it will always be
Pisan Zapra.
Bridge Ink 