:: And nine months from planting until fruit starts, usually in HI anyway. ::
I think you are confusing the paw paw with the papaya.
They are unrelated.
Paw Paw is indigenous to the Upper Midwest and Eastern woodlands.
I doubt it can be grown in HI.
Correspondingly, Q could be doing the same because I would think the African fruit would also be the papaya.
Aha, it is all clear now. The photo above looked exactly like a papaya. I used to work in a papaya orchard picking twice a week and the other days drying them for the owner’s wife, bags of them. Very yummy dried.