A year ago, I was a part of the Whitworth Central America Study program that traveled and studied in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica.

The majority of February, we spent in individual home stays in Honduras. I lived for three weeks in the home of a single mother, her daughter and a friend who lived with them. For a living, they bag and sell the mineral lime, earning about $2 on a good day.

In those three weeks, I learned perhaps more than I did on the rest of the trip. But throughout the entire trip, we learned a lot about how the United States exploits Central America, now and in the past. Two prominent ways are through the coffee trade and through fruit plantations.

The process of coffee going from farmer to retail is highly complex. Small coffee farmers are paid oppressively low prices for their coffee.

We visited a protest in Managua where about 5,000 banana workers had gathered. In the past, the pesticide Nemagon had been used on many banana plantations owned by large U.S. companies. The companies never trained the workers in safety precautions. As a result, many have had cancer and skin deformities, and their children have been born with birth defects. Some of the men are sterile. The workers were protesting because they never received monetary compensation to help pay for their health care.

The reflection below grew out of feelings I had after returning to the United States. It is impossible to look at a cup of coffee or see a banana without thinking of the people I met in Central America. I wrote the reflection because I wanted to show people how the Central America experience continues to affect my life on all levels.

How am I doing today, you ask?

Today was a day like many others since I came back.

It started at breakfast. The sight of bananas throws my mind into an ethical debate.

Should I eat it? I miss the sweet fruit. Who am I hurting if I do? What if I ate an organic one? Would that be enough to settle my conscience? Tell me, what would you do?

Did I tell you about the store I found the other day? It’s really cool. It’s a regular supermarket and deli but everything is organic. There are even organic chocolate chips. I was really excited to see it among endless strip malls and shopping centers.

And now I’m looking to get a quick lunch. Everything comes in plastic wrapping or containers. And I’m supposed to eat it with plastic utensils. It is so wasteful and a lot of it cannot be recycled. I don’t like to buy it because of the trash it generates. I carry a spoon around in my backpack to use each time.

And there is always going to the bathroom. To flush or not to flush? That is a serious question. Everywhere I turn there seems to be a decision I need to make which is either for or against the environment.

So how am I doing? As well as can be. Just living each day in the shadow of Central America, where even a banana can become an ethical dilemma.