I'll take it!

We were in South-Africa. My mother and I, that is. Invited by our neighbor's son, who was a missionary back then in Potchefstroom, we were enjoying the South-African sun. Roaming around on a local market, we were the attraction of the day. In those days, apartheid was still very hot. We were not racist at all. On the contrary, we wanted to mingle with the locals. They were not very happy with our decision and apparently it was very inconvenient and uncomfortable for them. They didn't trust our presence. We didn't know any better, being the naive tourists we were. When I think of it, even back then, at the age of 19, I was already interested in food. I loved to stroll on the local markets and discover new products. There was this old lady, dressed in a colorful but shabby dress. She had very little things to sell and most of it was barely noticeable, because of all the flies sitting on top of the fruit and vegetables. I was so curious to find out what that black, leather look like fruit was. We asked if we could pick it up. I tried to smell it, but couldn't identify the fruit. The lady laughed and showed the leftovers of what once was her beautiful denture. She picked three pieces of what we were pointing at and put it in a brown paper bag. We couldn't wait to cut that mysterious piece of fruit. We brought it back to the house we were staying at and asked the cook of the house what we had bought. He couldn't stop laughing, for we had bought overripe avocados... We were so stupid.. we had never seen ripe avocados before, for back in those days, nobody had ever bought avocados where we lived.. I can tell you: avocados have to be ripe, but skip the mushy ones. They are no good..