Last Friday at Asaga Market Square

Hello beautiful people, my name is Joyce and I’m so delighted to finally share one of my experiences in the Market day community.

No one ever prepared me for calculations when it comes to anything other than mathematics and every other subject or course that deals with nomenclature.Not to talk of market! Going to the Asaga market is one thing and the actual planning is another thing. The latter requires me to do calculations because of their limited number of market days in a week.

entrance to the Asaga market

About the Asaga village

Asaga is a small village in the Ohafia local government area of Abia state, Nigeria and they have their market days every 4 days. Which means, if asaga market day is today(Friday), the next time you can go to the market to get things is the following week’s Tuesday. And then Saturday and then Wednesday and so on.

The market space is big enough to accommodate about 100 sellers and their stands plus incoming and outgoing villagers that come in to purchase goods.

There are several bikes parked at the market entrance by their respective owners to convey marketers and customers to and from the market at any time of the day till the market is closed.

How I got to Asaga

If you asked me how I found myself in the village, I’ll tell you it’s NYSC meaning the National Youth Service Corp, that Nigeria dropped on me. It’s a mandatory one year activity to serve the motherland when you graduate from a higher institution.

However, if you asked me on a deeper level, I’d tell you that I was thrown into this village against my will. Of course we don’t get to choose where we’re posted to for the one year service after graduation but it’s still against my will.

Now that I was thrown to the village, I had to accept and adapt to their way of life. You know the saying of “when you get to Rome, you behave like a Roman.”
I began calculating the next market day prior to planning what to actually get from the market.

Interesting fact about the market

An amusing thing about this village market is that if you do not go to the market to purchase some things on the market day, you might not get those things on a regular day. So, it is survival for those who are conscious of the next market days. To add to that, it’s survival for those who can purchase their needed goods in bulk because if you snooze, you lose until the next market day.

My experience in the market Last Friday

Last friday I went with the mindset to purchase some food ingredients was the marketday. I wanted to prepare stew that has a number of lives. An example of lives that I wanted to purchase was frozen fish, goat meat, cow skin and dried fish. Eventually, I was only able to purchase the cow skin! You might want to ask me why?

Cow skin is the cheapest of the soup obstacles (meat) that you can possibly get and that’s exactly what I went for. I know it is not just me that’s feeling the inflation in the prices of things in the market and food ingredients are not even exceptions. Purchasing anything at all in this country has become stressful monetarily. Who is to blame ?!

Well, I observed that farm produce like palm oil, pepper, vegetables, cassava flakes and so on are reasonably affordable than the finished products in this village. And mind you, these farm produce have to be in their season for them to be relatively affordable.

On that very Friday, I took so many pictures of the goods that were displayed by the marketers that came to sell their stuff from within the village and beyond.
It was so beautiful to see. Goods range from clothes for both men and women and children, shoes, to cultural things, foodstuff, groceries, household equipment, beauty products as well as services like grinding of dried food ingredients.

I got my cow skin shamelessly and trekked back to my abode in the same village. Although there is hike in the prices of things in the market, I was still very content that I got to see many beautiful display of trading from the marketers, the smell of different food stuff, the sight of fresh vegetables and fruits, the beautiful colors of new dresses and shoes, the color of the sky, the feel of the sun on my skin and nature generally.All those are worth more than money but guess what? All of them are free of charge.

This was how my last Friday in the Asaga village market square went.
All pictures attached were taken by me and added into collages from the InShot app.
Thank you for reading.