Central Market vs Super Wal-Mart

I feel pretty confident getting around Jalingo (that is my little area of Jalingo) on my own. However, I had yet to conquer the central market independently. For those of you who have been dedicated blog followers, you’ll remember one of my first market excursions with my friend Laura where we bought a live chicken. I have been back a few times since but always with a friend leading the way. It always seems so daunting while I’m there that I had decided to try to avoid it by going to smaller little markets that are closer to my home. However, there are certain things that are unavailable at smaller markets that I really wanted such as Diet Coke, knitting pins, and wheat (to make whole wheat bread). I decided that the only way to conquer my apprehension regarding the market was to face it head on. I figured that maybe by going alone I would be able to learn my way around it better as opposed to following a friend blindly similarly to how you can better remember how to get somewhere when you’re driving car versus when you’re only a passenger!

On the taxi ride home, I was likening a trip to the market with a trip to Super Wal-Mart. The market is probably the size of 4-5 square blocks, hence larger than a Super Wal-Mart. Both contain nearly everything you need. However, in Wal-Mart items are organized categorically. One may not agree with the particular section that a particular item was placed, but they’re all together. At the market, there seems to be some sort of organization, but really everything is mixed together. I’m not really sure what the difference is among the 35 (probably a significant under-estimation) different tomato vendors or whether it is better to buy tomatoes from one of the vendors that is clustered together in a group 10 or to buy them from the person that is placed amongst the fabric. I’ve yet to get a definitive answer about that. Back to the comparison…both places are jam packed with people. However, in Wal-Mart the aisles are indoors, tiled, level, and about 6 feet wide. The market walk-ways are outdoors, rutted dirt and sand with puddles and just wide enough for one wheel barrow to get through. Never mind the challenge that is presented when the wheelbarrows try to pass by throngs of people!

Wal-Mart claims to have a helpful smile in every aisle (okay…I’ve later realized it’s not Wal-Mart, but good old Hy-Vee in Iowa…nonetheless…), but I’m confident that the Jalingo market has them outclassed in customer service. While the market is significantly deficient in adequate signage (none exists), it compensates by having many friendly people who are willing to struggle through the language barrier in order to understand what I need and then often personally take me great distances through a congested labyrinth simply to help me find what I’m looking for.

At Wal-Mart, large carts are provided to ease your shopping burden. This is not so at the Jalingo market. I have my arms and my large canvas HEB shopping bag, which has proven to be invaluable, to carry all items from the market to my house. Due to a weight limit that I am able to carry, I am forced to thoughtfully weigh the benefits of buying certain things with the costs of having to carry them for the rest of the shopping excursion. There are certain things that can only be purchased at the market and therefore those are non-negotiable, but other things that they may be cheaper at the main market are not cheap enough to justify carrying them around all over creation.

Wal-Mart, as you all know, is set up so that one collects all desired items and then brings them up to the check out to pay one grand total of a bill typically by debit or credit card. At the market, each item is purchased from a different vendor as a separate cash transaction. Nigeria, as a country, is still very much a cash-based society. That was quite the change for a girl who has purchased everything on a credit card for her entire adult life.

The final hurdle is finding my way out of the market, back to the main road, securing a taxi, and adequately communicating where I want to be dropped. As I was riding home I was considering whether or not I had conquered the market. I came to the conclusion that I had. The main market is not my favorite place in all of Jalingo, but I am now confident that though I will never know my way around the prodigious place of commerce known as the market, I am able to navigate it with a reasonable degree of success. I managed to get all necessary items and a few bonus ones that I didn’t even know existed let alone know that I needed!