Alade (Uh-lah-day) Market is a fairly large market made up of rows and rows of little stalls. We only went into part of the market, and I would guess that it is anywhere from 5 to 10 acres in size. This man was walking by carrying 2 live chickens in each hand. We walked by some wire cages, stacked one on top of each other that were crammed full of live chickens. On our way out we went by where they were getting ready to break the necks of some chickens. I decided not to look.
I'd heard of these giant snails before, but this is the first time I'd ever seen them. Brother Bright said that they cook them with lime. I'd have to have fasted for about a week to want to try a bite of this slimy guy. At this same stand they had bowls with tiny snails. Sister Gold from my ward had talked about cooking Periwinkles, and I got to see those. They are a very small snail with shells that are periwinkle blue in color. They also sold smoked fish and dried fish. It smelled pretty fishy and gross in this part of the market. They also had other meat for sale, like goat and beef. I didn't take any pictures, but it is just sitting out with no refrigeration or covers.
Here's a shoe shop to my left. Ladies love all kinds of colored sandals. They also wear high heels with real pointy toes. You can see how narrow these aisles are - it's kind of a one-way path.
This lady is getting her hair braided with extensions added in. The extensions are just a synthetic fiber like what a super-cheap clown wig might be made of.
Cute airy straw hats. I've seen several hat shops around Ikeja, but I've never seen any women wear these types of hats. They are fun to look at though.
There are lots of tailoring shops, and this one was on a corner where two aisles intersected. This flat iron is heated on the green stove at the back of the table. The handle is wrapped in fabric, but it was still hot to hold. They let me iron on the fusible interfacing. This would be one hot job to do for very long since there is no electricty, hence no air conditioning at this market.
These are some fairly typical cotton prints. They feel pretty nice. These have been waxed, so they have a shine to them and are not at all wrinkled. They sell them in 6 yard pieces, and their asking price is 2,500 Naira, which is about $17.00. That doesn't sound too expensive for 6 yards, but at the fabric market in Ibadan, it would be about half that much money if you dickered for it.
This is a peak inside the fabric store. There were many fabric shops. Some sell lots of the lace fabrics, like eyelets. They also sell the head ties in the fabric shops.
This seamstress (they use the term tailor) was busy sewing on her treadle machine. They take your measurements, you describe what you want, and they sew it up. Sometimes you are in for a surprise when you see the finished product.
We only shopped for a couple of hours and got to see some interesting things. We hope to go another day and look in a different part of the market. We saw lots of ready-made clothing shops, children shops, lingerie shops, housewear, etc. I guess this is as close to Walmart as I'll get here in my part of the world.
Elder Snow brought us back some zucchini seeds from Salt Lake when he returned after General Conference. Sister Jones and I buy a lot of zucchini whenever we can find nice little ones. So Saturday morning, May 9, I pulled up a section grass and worked some sand into the dirt to make it soft and fluffy. Then I planted 4 seeds in my little circle, and four days later I had these little seedlings.
This is after 1 week of growing.
Saturday I worked in my little garden again. I pulled up more grass to enlarge the growing area and put tiles left over from the mission home construction around as a border so that Brother Evans doesn't mow them down. I pulled out 2 seedlings so it wasn't too crowded to produce nice plants. Aren't they cute? Anyone in Idaho want to have a race to see who will be eating zucchini first?
