The members of the Rise and Shine multipurpose cooperative in a village near Buchanan, Liberia have been growing cowpeas for as long as they can remember. They eat the peas and the greens and may also use it to feed their livestock.

But they have never used cowpeas as a substitute for wheat flour. Most wheat is imported and yet cowpeas grow in their backyards. And cowpeas are rich in protein.

So the team at Liberia’s Central Agricultural Research Institute taught  the Rise and Shiners how to make cowpea flour and use it to make a nutritious cake.

I arrived to find eight members awaiting me. They had carefully made a spread of all of the ingredients and wanted to demonstrate how they make banana ginger cake, which they sell to students at a community college.

I videoed the demonstration as one woman showed the entire process. I didn’t know what to do with the other women and I asked them to sit behind me while I filmed. We finished filming and yet I had these lovely women sitting and I had only photographed one. I drew a blank and just couldn’t come up with any kind of approach I could use to include them. But they all had colorful dresses and wore their homemade Freedom aprons, which are styled around the Liberian national flag which in turn bears a close resemblance to the US flag. I couldn’t go home without photographing them all.

So I asked them one by one to hold the cake and stand in the soft light of the door. And one by one I captured their lovely smiles so I could share the remarkable women of the Rise and Shine cooperative with the world.