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Mom and I decided to make a whirlwind trip to market this morning to look for curtain cloth. Now, it might help to realise that there are lots of different kinds of shoppers in the world. There are the type who go to every single store and look at every single product before deciding that nothing’s good enough. Then there are the type who know exactly what they want but still have to look through every product to find it. There are picky people and laid back people.I’m no interior decorator. Curtains are to cover the windows, not to show off my chic style and taste. Then again, I have to look at them sometime, and guests may notice them, so I certainly don’t want to come across as dull or grubby. But I’m cheap and simple. I don’t go for elegant and expensive, or even elegant and cheap. Mom said at one point, “You’ll have to think about whether your blankets and bedspread will match the curtains.” I just laughed. Why bother matching? Besides, our Nigerian blanket is black and gray, and our bedspread (hand-delivered from China) is cream and gold, so already we’re going for an eclectic motif.
To get to the curtain places, it’s easiest to park on the main downtown street, Ahmadu Bello Way, and walk through a bit of market. It’s muddy. It’s crowded. There are vendors with umbrellas and wooden stalls selling raw meat, fish, vegetables, and plastic doodads. It smells…well…different. Later in the day they’ll have live chickens down there, tied by the legs and clucking up a storm. We passed through all the muck and started to the shops. Not too many shops were open on our way down the strip, as it was just 9 o’clock. But we looked anyway. We got all the way down to the very end and finally stopped in a store that sold wrapper material. After much debate, Mom and I decided this would be simpler than buying curtain material (and probably cheaper). So we started hunting in that shop for cloth.
We already have curtains in our living room, which we’ll take over to our new place. The problem is that they’re sheer and don’t provide a whole lot of privacy. So we decided to get some thicker material and do a double-layer. The sheers can be up all the time, and we can close the thicker drapes when it gets dark. We found a lovely slate blue shada (with a sort of shimmery watermark), which. I think will be splendid. For our bedroom, I found some pink-and-green cloth I really liked. It’s your typical Nigerian wax (I’ll just have to show you what I mean), nothing special. But it’s bright and cheerful, and I’m not very picky. Simple. The shopkeeper wanted to charge us a lot for our purchase of 16 yards, but Mom asked him if he couldn’t sell it to us for less since we were buying so much. He was reluctant, and I thought for sure he’d say no, and that would be the end. But he saw the tape measure around Mom’s neck and asked if she were a tailor. Mom answered, “Not professionally, but I certainly have done a lot of sewing!” And the owner relented, saying he sold to tailors “wholesale.” Cool! So we got our two pieces of cloth and were outta there.
We stopped at a store two doors down to get some lining material, just a thin solid colour. We found a darling light blue for the living room drapes and an off-white for the bedroom curtains. We got the price reduced by 8 cents a yard, and since we were getting 16 yards, the owner knocked off a whole N40 ($0.31) off the total for us! I was satisfied with our purchases and ready to help Mom find something she liked. Mom was amazed. I’m the kind of shopper who goes into a store with an open mind, sees something she likes, makes sure it’s within budget, and buys it.
Well, Mom is another kind of shopper altogether. I wouldn’t call her picky, but she definitely has particular ideas about what she wants-which is great as long as that sort of thing is available. On our way back along the strip of shops, we stopped in a few stores, but Mom couldn’t find anything she liked for her bedroom (the curtains of which are in rather sad shape). At our very last stop before we headed back to the car, we found some curtain cloth for Luke’s room. It was cute, the right size, and a good price to boot. So she bought 2 yards (it was 90″ long!), and we were off. Back through the muck, back past the vendors hawking their wares, back past the beggars coming up to us with their plastic bowls extended and heaping blessings upon us in Hausa, back to the main street. In an hour-and-a-half, we’d fulfilled most of our mission. Another successful trip to market!
Susan arrived at 9:15 this morning to go with me to the used clothes market at Katako, a nearby (predominantly Muslim) neighbourhood in Jos. I hadn’t been there since…probably 1997 or 1998, so it’s been a while. But I needed to look for some maternity clothes, so Susan offered to go with me, since she needed some stuff, too.
That part of town is a maze, and this morning, it was busy with traffic weaving around potholes full of last night’s rain (and who knows what else). I admire Susan so much for her driving skills, patience, and–above all–bravery! We parked in the parking lot of a nearby school and walked the last few hundred yards to the market. We got a lot of stares, and several children walking by shouted, “Baturia!” (white woman). But we’re used to that, especially in that part of town.
It was muddy from last night’s rain, and we hoped the still-sprinkling clouds would clear up as we shopped rather than dumping more rain on our expedition. (Thank you, God!) We turned down the road leading to the market and negotiated puddles, broken bits of pavement, and motorcycles while crossing to the market alleyway. Let me just say that the market has changed tremendously since I was there last. In ’97, it was a hodgepodge group of tin-sided shanty stalls all facing a dirt road that ran between two rows. Now the place is built up. The stalls are actually in concrete buildings (some even have glass doors!). Going down the alleyway between them is like going down a hallway with open rooms on either side as far as the eye can see.
We had no idea where to go to find maternity clothes, so we asked a few shopkeepers. After passing many closed shops (which were open when we left two hours later), we started our shopping.
Of course, most of you have shopped at your nearest resale shop, consignment store, thrift store, Salvation Army, or wherever. You know it’s just a tedious process of looking through pretty much everything there is in a particular category. Katako is no different. We looked through shops for almost two hours and came up with three dresses for me (for a total of US$8.85) and two shirts for Susan. Not great, but not bad! I’m afraid we got our first two dresses for about $1.50 each, so after that, when one man quoted us a price of N1300 ($10) for a particular dress, we bargained until he was asking for his “last price” of N800 ($6) and walked away. The prices didn’t seem to go down at all, though. I bought my next dress for N750!! But oh well.
The neatest shop Susan took me to (one with glass doors) was a store full of Indian-style outfits. Each outfit had a knee-length sheer shift with slits up the sides, and a matching pair of trousers. They were so lovely, I could have spent an hour in that shop just looking at each one. Sadly, none were big enough to accommodate my growing tummy (Baby “Kes” is due Nov 14th, so I’m almost five months along). So I told the shopkeeper I might return after I “put to bed” (pidgin for delivering a baby).
Our last stop was a shop Susan knew well and had been to several times before. We sat there for about twenty minutes looking through two bundles of shirts. (You have to realise these “shops” are stalls only about 10′ deep and 3 or 4′ across. Pretty tiny. So there’s not a lot of space to display clothes. Most of them are stacked on benches or still in bags or bundles.) Almost all of the shirts were either miniscule or too sheer (or both). It makes sense, considering most young women here are just small in general. But kai, it was frustrating. Susan and I aren’t particularly large, but we still had a hard time finding shirts! We must have looked at a hundred or so. Some of them had funny slogans (“You’ve got me. What are your other two wishes?” and “So close, and yet so far from getting my number!”), and some were cute, but… Yeah. While Susan crammed behind a curtain to try on a shirt (in an area smaller than a phone booth), I had a nice chat with the lady who sat 2″ away from me on a bench facing my plastic purple stool. She was a largish woman and was complaining to me–who completely understood–her woes about finding clothes to fit her. I listened and sympathised, and nodded, and passed her a few shirts I thought might be big enough for her. Poor woman. Susan finally bought the two shirts that fit her (and were decent), paid the men and spoke to them about Jesus, and we started home.
So I have three “new” dresses and a lot to laugh about! Thanks, Susan! I had a good time. 
I’ve now been grocery shopping for the first time in town. Granted, I haven’t braved the open-air market yet – mostly because I don’t trust myself to haggle successfully – but at least now I know where to buy spaghetti noodles and tissues!
Our morning began at the mission headquarters, where Mom can get money three days a week. After a brief stop at one of many local pharmacies, we arrived at one of our town “supermarkets” (a hole in the wall, about 20′ x 8′). There we got most of our canned goods, Ramen (Indomie) noodles, spices, toiletries, soy sauce, and powdered milk. Some of our “gold mine” finds included coconut milk, which Mom says only appears once every few months; ground cinnamon; raisins; sesame oil; and even tapioca!
Next we went to the Lebanese store where Mom can buy imported cheese. (Not me. The price is just too high, so I’ll learn how to cook without dairy products.) We got instant coffee, sugar, flour, couscous, and halveh (a favourite sweet sesame spread).
Our next stop was one of the bigger supermarkets in town. Mom avoids this store usually because we have to pay N20 to park (about $0.16). There we procured semovita for last night’s dinner, some plastic containers in which to store my dry ingredients (did I mention we have a mouse in our house?), and an ice tray. We looked for a toaster, but to no avail – although there were lots of different electric kettles and even two microwaves!
Right across the street we went to the meat store, where we bought some pork (which is cheaper than beef). I coveted the bratwurst, but at N1400/kg ($5/lb), it’s totally unrealistic with a weekly budget of about N6000!
Up the street and around the corner, we bought a flat of 36 eggs. (Mom used to buy her eggs from a woman on the hospital compound, but last summer, a huge truck ran into the chicken coop and killed almost all her hens.) Just across the street, we made a stop at the fresh produce stalls. From one man we bought all our vegetables and from his neighbour all our fruit. Luxuries included broccoli, strawberries, and potatoes! Yum!
Our last stop was the bakery, where Mom buys pita bread and can occasionally buy whole wheat pita. Not this time. So we both bought some white pita, and I got a loaf of regular white bread for sandwiches.
And finally we were on our way home! The whole trip took about 4 hours, and when we returned we still had to sort through our vegetables to figure out what was whose. Then Mom taught me how to sterilise the vegetables I wanted to eat fresh (only tomatoes this time) to avoid getting typhoid or whatever. Phew. What a morning! Now I just need to get my stove & oven working…
