Shopping at Paynesville City Market

Monday April 16, 2012: Shopping at Paynesville City Market

Nina and Paul arrived from the States yesterday, and today we began planning our herring distribution with Samaritan’s Purse.

After meeting with the country director of SP and meeting many of the office staff, we had the great privilege to work with SP’s Liberian cook, Dee. Dee is at least six feet tall, towering over the rest of us, and she is bursting with personality, laughter, and style. She is letting us use her kitchen for our herring recipe development, and so we decided to crack open a can (literally, with a knife. Who needs can openers?).

We were curious to see what a Liberian cook would think of the herring. She put the fish on a plate, threw in some sliced raw onion and chicken broth, and called it done. Simple, appetizing, and fresh. She asked one of the SP staff to taste it, and we asked him in anticipation, “Do you like it?” He paused, then exclaimed, “I more than like it!” Phew! Most of the office staff had a similar response, which was absolutely wonderful to see.

After the tasting, Dee took us to a local food market to shop for ingredients for the recipe development tomorrow with some of the cooks who will be working with the herring. The market was a complete sensory explosion. It was in an open-air warehouse space, with vendors and their tables crammed in creating narrow paths for shoppers. It was hot, crowded, and smelled like everything. Fish. Vegetables. Babies. Earth. Most of the vendors were women, which meant that there were also a lot of children running around, babies in cloth slings on their backs, and toddlers playing on tables. Many sold vibrant red and green peppers, which are small, but very spicy. Some were the size of grapes or even jelly beans. Some women also sold fish, some dried, some fresh. People here love seafood and are used to it, since Monrovia is a port city.

Among all of the produce and dried goods, I noticed a table with a couple piles of several-inch-long, black, conical things, with ridges. They reminded me of pinecones, and I thought they were some sort of large seed or fruit. Upon closer inspection however, I noticed that some of them were languorously moving. Liberians call them “iron meat”, and they are a type of shellfish. I’m a pretty adventurous eater, but I’ll take herring over the iron meat, trust me.

We bought some potato leaf greens, onions, tomatoes, Maggi broth cubes, cooking oil, and squash. Liberians call squash "pumpkin", and pronounce it “pwahn keeyahn” in Liberian English. Onion is "owahn yahn." Tomorrow the staff and cooks will work their magic with these ingredients and the herring to see how the fish will fit into local cuisine.

So far I've spent most of my time in our hotel and at the ELWA (Everlasting Love Winning Africa) compound where SP is, which are pretty Westernized places. Going to the market with Dee (who knew how to negotiate far better than we could) felt like we were getting to see more of the real Liberia. People were working here, trying to make enough money to feed themselves and their children. There was a sense of movement and energy, a hustle and bustle of daily life and labor, and a feeling that if you didn’t keep up, you might get left behind.