Bitter Ball

A long time customer of the Armory Park farmers market, Hawa just finished shopping at one of the many stands run by African farmers. She carries away with her a bag of bitter ball, a vegetable commonly used in West African cuisine.

It's stuff I bought from her, it's called bitter ball. They put it in soup, they cut it. I don't know why they call it bitter; this one is not bitter. I like the bitter one. My girlfriend, she loves bitter, sweet, she don't mind. But I like the bitter one for reasons, like sometimes you say you don't want to eat and you have to encourage yourself with soup. If you use the bitter ball in soup it gives you the appetite to eat. It's good, everybody call it garden egg, like if you go on social media, the Nigerians call it garden egg. For what reason, I don't know. Ghanaians call it garden egg, but we from Liberia, we call it bitter ball no matter what kind—the bitter one, the sweet one, we call it bitter ball. 

This market, I go to all the time. I used to go to the Broad Street market a lot, but after COVID, I haven't been there. We had to stand in line, the restriction was too tough. My mind still tells me they're standing in line; I know they don't stand in line like they did during the COVID time, but now I have the habit coming here. And it’s closer to home. I got my car right there.

This particular market, I started coming here 2014. A lot of vendors, most of them got older and have problems so you don't see them no more. I see new faces, but they’re very nice so I like coming here. The shoppers, they come to shopping, bring their kids, and the kids’ll be in the park. They have something to do and you got something to do, so nobody is bored.

I love the farmer market. If you want fresh and cheap you come over here. Because here you can do the negotiation. If it's almost time for them to go, most of them don't want to take their stuff  because it's going to spoil, they want to sell it. So they'll come down on the price for us who can't afford to pay the high price. Like you go to the store, they have reduced, you don't find reduced over here. So reduced would be, if they selling something like this (she holds up her bag of bitter ball) for five dollars and you come late and they don't want to take it home because they got no place to store it, they might give it to you for $4 or $3.50. Which is not bad. I like coming over here, it's full of people from every class. 

I go to the grocery store for what they have over there because some of their stuff over there you don't find over here. When it comes to vegetables, I would rather come and get everything from here because the greens, I love greens a lot and you'll find all kinds over here.

At the grocery store, some of the greens you find here, you won't find them over there because here it's tropical greens. In the grocery store you'll find kale, collard, swiss chard, this and that. But here, if you walk your way down and ask the marketer, if you say ‘what's the name of this, the greens?’ they'll tell you what the green is for, what it does for the body. I've never seen a bitter ball in the supermarket. They don't know about bitter balls. So I guess the supermarket won't mind carrying bitter ball, but if you see it you're not going to look at it, you're not going to buy it. They had pepper, the Jamaican pepper. When I first came to America, I never saw Jamaican pepper in a supermarket. It was always collard green, kale, and spinach. So we replaced that for our kale, for the greens that we wanted. Now, thank god for the farmers market.