Bo Waterside, Liberia--Clinging to cheap kitchenware and the hope of a better life, Fatima Kamara hawks her goods to travellers when she should probably be doing her homework.
The 16-year-old keeps her family afloat by selling at the main crossing point between her native Liberia and Sierra Leone, but she was put out of business for months when the Ebola crisis shut the border.
Today she is able to return to her spot on the reopened Mano River Bridge linking the countries, desperate to make up for lost income.
"Come and buy your rubber dishes for small money. Come and see the best offers. Small, small money. Anyone can afford it," Kamara cries out to potential customers making the crossing on foot.
Traders were dismayed when the bridge shut for six months at the height of an epidemic which has claimed more than 10,000 lives.
With the border reopened since February, the commercial post of Bo Waterside on the Liberian side is once again open for business, a symbol of hope for the country's desperately-needed economic recovery.
"I sell these dishes to help my parents in sending me to school. My parents are not working... I go to school in the morning and sell in the afternoon," Kamara tells AFP.
"When the border was closed I was afraid that I would not be able to go to school."
Shops in Bo Waterside, a settlement of a few hundred that grew up around the crossing point, sell pasta, rice and local specialties such as popcorn balls.
AFP
