All throughout Monrovia there are street vendors selling everything under the sun – out of wheelbarrows they push down the roads, in plastic baskets and buckets they carry on their heads, off cloths they lay down on the pavement to display their wares, and on makeshift tables and stands.
In particular, there are a lot of women selling fruits and vegetables, usually clustered in certain areas around town. There isn’t a huge array of produce, but you will easily find tomatoes, onions, garlic, greens, cucumbers, potatoes and sweet potatoes, plantains, and avocados (which Liberians neatly call “butter pears”).
I’m not very good at eating my veggies, but I love the fruits they have for sale – pineapples, papayas (which Liberians and other Africans call “paw paw”), oranges, apples, mangoes, guava, and bananas in more shapes, sizes, and flavours than you ever knew existed. My favourite are the small sweet fingerling bananas.