Dikko Market

Move over Tesco! And forget anything that I said about Nigerian supermarkets. The prestigious 'King of Variety' title goes to Dikko Market - a giant Fulani market on the way to Minna. (That said, I didn't see any chandeliers or two foot high plastic hippos; a bit of a let down, but that's by-the-by for now...)

After browsing the goat and ram arena (decided against buying as I was disturbed by the giant testicles), we moved on to view the artwork of giant calabash bowls (I've never seen a calabash actually growing ever). From there we passed piles of tomatoes and onions (a market is not a market if it doesn't have onions and tomatoes), fresh cashew fruits, chickens and ducks, then through to cloth and second-hand clothing. You can: buy walking sticks, get your plastic shoes melted back together, your knife sharpened, sample a plastic rug, collect a pile of yams, purchase some strange green powder, pray in the prayer ground (men only), buy a basket, get a suit made, sit under a tree, procure some chickens..... The list is endless. Hours of fun!

The most intriguing stalls are those selling items for traditional medicine, or perhaps even juju. You can acquire some nice snake skins, a dried chameleon or two, rat heads, animal fur, sticks, bits of crumbly rock, and testicles. What more could you want? Oddly, I've never seen a transaction taking place at one of these stalls. In fact the biggest crowd was attracted not by the stall, but by us trying to identify which animal had donated precious body parts to the stall.

You can shop til you drop and never worry about a heavy load, as small boys follow you around, clipping your heels with wheelbarrows at the ready.

If you were so inclined, after the shopping spree, you could follow your nose to the palm wine section. Here the air is full of palm wine fumes as it's sloshed from jerry can to calabash to mouth and dribbled to ground. Indeed it must have been those very fumes pushing people from tipsy to drunk. A policeman's motorbike sat rider-less at the periphery, waiting for a dignified journey home later - nee naw, nee naw HICCUP nee naw ssssssshhhhhttttop theifffff HICCUP nee naw.