Abuja, Nigeria Third Day

Wusi market butchers.

Foreground: dried shrimp.

Curlicues: dried cow skin

Black rings are dried fish (a wire is run thru the fish and its dried in a circle so that the fish looks like its swallowing its own tail (first imported from Iceland during the Biafran conflict to provide much needed protein supplementation in the local diets. Now it's a delicacy)

Live chickens with proprietor taking a break on top of cages.

January 24, 2009
Today, our last day in Abuja (day three), we visited the Wusi market. The scientific justification I think was to get a sense of local customs, diet and culture. And did we ever. I'm sort of starting at the end of my Abuja experience but it was pretty fascinating.

Imagine a market packed with stalls with bags filled to overflowing with snow white millet, sunshine yellow ground cassava, black eyed peas, red orange and yellow scotch bonnets, ripe plum tomatoes, tiny dried caramel colored shrimp so strongly scented they made your mouth water, periwinkle colored snails the size of your thumb pad, huge grey/brown snails the size of a small foot, canned goods stacked 10 feet high, cages packed with live auburn feathered chickens with bright red combs, cages of rabbits and guinea pigs and pheasants, bunches of spinach, bottled water, pineapple, plums, green and red grapes, tiny apples, fruits with the skin of papaya but the size of a lime, drums of palm oil (a red very viscous oil that's used in abundance in local food preparation), canola oil, tubs filled with live catfish the size of carnival baseball bats and very little water and more! Not to mention the people...brown faces everywhere!

Everything was in close proximity to everything else -- only enough room for two adults to pass one another. Children followed us as if we were the pied pipers. Some watching the mysterious whites, other trying to sell us stuff and some just asking us to "snap" them (take my picture).

I "accidently" wandered into the slaughter house section of the market where I was met with headless skinned goats and piles of blood and entrails and other recently hacked animal parts. It was revolting but I couldn't turn away. The air was thick with the sweet metallic smell of blood and rotting meat. I had to sip the air to breath. There was no mistaking this was local at it's truest and purest. It's permanently changed my perception of the farmer's market.

The vendors, as you can imagine, were an enterprising bunch. When they realized we weren't there to buy but to watch and snap. They angrily said "no buy, no snap!" I couldn't blame them. I have so much more to say about the day but there is a queue for the one computer in this hotel (I am now in boogie down Lagos -- it has a well deserved reputation but that's another story). I'll write soon to tell you about my first time veiling , visiting the national mosque, the Lagos highways and more!

Did you know that Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa boasting 14M? One in every black in the world is of Nigerian descent?

E'che. Yoruba for thank you, for reading my story.