Just Another Day in a Nigerian Market

The Nigerian marketplace is a potpourri of interesting experiences. Experiences you won’t get or have anywhere else. You want to be cracked up? Head on. You want to be comprehensively angered? Go there. Much more interestingly, you want to be cheerful? That’s the place. 

I have had myriads of funny and not so funny experiences at various markets. 

Namely

Nigerian market people will not hesitate to rename you without due consultation or prior permission. Besides the general ‘Customer’ title even a JJC (“Johnny Just Come,” any newcomer) can earn on the very first market visit, there are tons of other names like Sister, Aunty, Mummy, and Fine Girl. Plus the ones that depend on your complexion or appearance like Oyinbo (my color) or Akowe (my wife). Funny. 

Hilarious

These people are hilarious. I remember that time a guy was calling me over “Bola!” while adding “Agidi e yi naa ni/ke dai bakya ji” (This stubbornness of yours is the problem). And I was like, “E ma gba ma mi ke/keda wa kuma?” (You and who else?). 

Let me tell you off

One – these market people sometimes feel they’ve earned the right to lecture you and advise you on societal vices and virtues. I can’t forget a recent experience at a food market so easily. I had priced a tube of tomato paste and inquired if the other type of the same brand was the same price. The woman turned to pick a nylon bag or something and I picked up the tube to give her, only for her to turn back, see the one I’d picked and scolding me like, “She iyen le mu tele me enh? Se iyen le bere tele. E je ma ni itelorun/wannan kika taya? ki bar ruwan ido” (What did you think, isn’t it that one you priced before? You better be content, yada yada/da sauransu/et cetera). “Ah ah, what’s that?” in an angry voice. I simply dropped it and walked off while she ran on. 

Two – I went to another vendor to buy something else and since they gave me an unfavorable price, I began to walk off. She was like, “Answer now, how much will you pay, Aunty Dada, hajjaju? Answer now!” Really? I came back angry with “Aunty Dada, Hajjaju? Aunty Dada? Rele/Da kyau/Peacefully?” 

Three – okay my dressy hair is all packed up in semi-twists and twist outs, so what? And what with me trying to find my way in the dense traffic of the market, some woman snapped, “Iya Gomina’ e he ka koja.!/Maman gwamna bamu wuri mu wuce!” (Wait, is today a disrespectful-people-only market day? Governor’s mother! Please let us pass.) 

Let me bless you

But then the marketplace can also be an interesting place. It’s where you get to laugh at some overzealous retailer yabbing another, where barrow men keep yelling at you to get out of the way, where you can be emotionally blackmailed into a budget deficit. 

And where the same market men and women with the same mouth with which they tell you eight cups is a kongo — a standard measurement homemakers already know — also earnestly ply you with hackneyed prayer points after a pedestrian preacher. 

And oh, the bright smile you elicit when you quip in Hausa, “Maka gini?/A dalilin me?” (For what reason?) to a Hausa woman like me, the triumphant glow on the face of the seller who’s managed to hijack you into her stall out of several vendors hailing you to stop by theirs… The funny manner in which loudspeakers describe a non-existent problem with your own health to you and how their omnipotent product has been made just for you… The reminder that there are still honest people “In Nigeria!” by a seller who calls you back for your change as you walk away absentmindedly. 

I bet you have one or two interesting stories to tell, too, about open-air markets.

In other news, I am doing a One-Fruit-Daily-Challenge this month. I started with watermelon yesterday, and today it’s oranges. But we’ll talk about that later okay? Wink. Bye!