The fruits of Liberia

Today I took a ride out to the home of the Deputy Minister who I work for, so I could drop off a few documents with him. I called him from the car to get directions from the major intersection we were approaching. He told me to take a left and that he would be standing under a plum tree on the right side of the road. I wasn’t sure what a plum tree looked like, but I know what he looks like, so I figured we’d be ok.

About 100 yards down the road we found him, and I hopped out to hand him the papers and chat. It turned out that we were right in front of his house. He showed me the three plum trees in his front yard and said we should see if someone could pick one for me. Not a minute later, a ripe plum fell from one of the trees. We laughed and he handed it to me. This was not any sort of plum I was familiar with. It looked like a mango, but it had the coloring of a pear.

When I got back into the car, our driver Alfred could tell I had no idea how to eat this thing. He instructed me to bite a piece of the skin and essentially peel it off, then eat the fruit inside. The fruit really looked like a mango, so I asked Alfred if it was a mango. He asked, “Have you never had this fruit before?” I said, no, not here. He said, “Plums are all over Liberia.”

I tried it, and it was very good, really ripe and juicy. It tasted like a mango.

We picked up one of our colleagues (Liberian by birth, but a longtime resident of the U.S.) on our way home, and I told her about this fruit I had tried. I explained that there was a plum tree in the Minister’s yard and I tried one and it really tasted like a mango. She just laughed.

Lesson learned: they call mangoes plums in Liberia.