The 280th good thing about Lagos: Balogun market

I had a spontaneous trip to Balogun market when a friend invited me to go there with her after the museum lecture.  Her son was in Lagos visiting and she wanted him to have a real Nigerian market experience.  Balogun market is very nearby, but we are advised to go their with security, as it can be a rough area.  So it takes some organization to get there, and I jumped at the opportunity to join with them.  There's a big variety of goods available in this market area, but the big attraction for us is fabric.  But I did take some pictures of things that we didn't go for -- like these dried fish, which were really long.  I hadn't seem them quite like this before.

 Need any cow stomach?

 Here's how we usually see dried fish -- curved into a circle with a skewer and then dried.

 And then there are some hoofs.  Really don't know how they will use these.

 The streets are full with lots of people carrying lots of things on their heads.

 The white people always get lots of cries of "oyibo."  There are so many thousands of stalls with so many fabrics.  I don't know how they stay in business.  There are areas of the market for different kinds of fabric -- for juvenile fabrics, men's clothing fabric, upholstery fabric, glittery fabric, etc.  I'm sure I haven't explored even a small portion of what's available there.

 Plenty of purses hanging for sale in this shop.

 Kind of hard to see in this picture, but there are lots of coral beads for sale in this shop.  There's a whole area of the market for beads.

 After we got our fabric purchases at Balogun, my friend wanted to go take a look at the Yaba Market area.  I had a visit to Yaba Market four years ago.  At that time, we were commenting on how this building was a fire trap, as it had floors of cloth piled high and kerosene lamps all over to light the building.  Well, about 6 months after our visit, the building burned down.  I had heard that they were rebuilding the market building and it was amazing to see how huge this market will be.  There are plenty of sellers all spread out around the market that is being built.  We didn't get out of the car, but just looked from the windows, so my pictures have the glare from the car window.  I don't know if we'll still be in Lagos when this market is finished, but this will be another really interesting shopping experience when it opens.

 We decided not to get meat for dinner from these guys chopping it up.

You can't really tell from these pictures how enormous this market will be, but it is several blocks wide in each direction.  I hope they finish it soon!