Just Another Not So Boring Day Visit At Lagos Island Market

Being indoors can be really addictive, you get so comfortable and you convince yourself that you don’t need outside, outside needs me. Lol, that’s what I tell myself and find more reasons to just stay at home. The ironic thing is, while am lazy to go out, I still don’t shop online. I don’t shop online because I don’t trust what I see on the Internet. What is usually displayed is most times not what you see or expect, so I prefer to buy my stuff physically so I can see what am buying.

Not going out to buy what I need has cost me not having lots of things, because I end up postponing having them. I have been wanting to change the curtains in my house but as usual, changing it requires going out to look for it. The laziness has engulfed me so much, I postponed it for 7 months, but this time, I decided it had to be done.

Going to Lagos island market alone can be very boring, the market is very big and should be one of the biggest market in Lagos state. So I decided to go with @onwugbenuvictor. Lagos should be the smallest state in Nigeria but the most populous place in terms of people and also popular in name. It’s population is so much that traffic is almost inevitable. I live in a place called ogba, but traffic aside the journey from my house to Lagos Island Market is less than an hour. We ended up spending almost 2 hours while going to the market because of the traffic.

Taking a bus from ogba to Lagos Island directly is not available, so you have to take a bus going to a place called CMS, not too far from the market. The bus going to CMS stopped us at TBS(Tafawa Balewa Square). The bus station is just out side TBS, the moment you step down from the bus you are directly facing the TBS. I really don’t know much about TBS(remember I stay indoors all day). I only know that the square is large enough to accommodate a large number of people for an event. The square has 4 horse statues built in front of it. But that’s not where I was going to, may be I will have to take my time and do a little research about the place and post it on Hive.

To get to Lagos island from TBS you need to take another vehicle, which is like 10 minutes away from TBS. We entered the vehicle and went straight to the market which was just 10 minutes away. Anyone that has been to Lagos island knows that you haven’t gotten to Lagos Island Market if you don’t have people trying to convince you to come patronize them, it’s always impossible not to encounter them. You have lots of young guys, trying to beg you and give you reasons why you should come and patronize them.

Some times, while they can be very annoying they can also be useful. I have never bought curtain before, so I didn’t know where to go or start from in my search for curtains. As usual, we were approached by one of them and i told him I wanted to buy curtains. This guy took us to a place they sell curtains, the curtains sold there were looking inferior not the quality we wanted to buy.

He then took us to a different place, this place was a lot better, had the quality and color of fabric we were looking for, the price was better, we chose it and everyone was happy. But then, we needed to give them time to prepare the curtain down for decorating, this involved sewing the curtain and adding rings on the curtain for hanging.

This process was going to take 5 - 6 hours because the man had other jobs. Staying on a spot for that long can be extremely boring and uncomfortable so @onwugbenuvictor and I decided to go somewhere else either for window shopping or for an actual shopping.

While exploring the market, as usual we got approached by these market boys again. I can’t count how many of these boys I tried avoiding, while trying to avoid one, you get approached by another one. No matter how hard you try to convince them and tell them you only came to the market for curtains, they won’t leave you alone. Lol, I told one I didn’t have money to buy what he sells and he was arguing with me that I have money but didn’t want to patronize him. In as much as I appreciate the fact that they are trying to earn their daily bread, we can’t dispute the fact that they tend to be a nuisance most times.

I spent most of my time in the market negotiating and trying to reason with them to stop following me, I don’t have money to patronize them or buy whatever they sell. After few hours of wandering around the market and buying other stuff in the market like clothes, shoes and having lunch, we decided to go back and collect the curtains.

It was nice having a different experience for the day compared to my usual indoor activities. I will like to thank @onwugbenuvictor for taking these pictures, because if he wasn’t with me, I won’t have taken these pictures.