A
barren, dilapidated landscape filled with rubble and trash is all that
remains of a once vibrant community of road side traders and residents,
and their ramshackle structures are no more. Gone are the rows of wooden
makeshift store fronts positioned side by side, with a dirt-filled
gutter barely covered with planks separating the market from the
pot-holed filled road.
Young
women carrying goods on their heads used to mingle with vegetable
traders and recharge card sellers, and rows and rows of young men sat
under umbrellas next to their wares or in their tiny shacks that had
powdered milk and biscuit packets hanging from the roofs. There used to
be rickety tables full of vegetables or bread for sale, and towards the
back men sat on hastily constructed benches and chairs.
Hair-dressers,
mama-puts, barbers, butchers, gas cylinders of varying heights lined up
for sale, a kiosk selling DVDs, a drinks station with cartons of water
bottles and soft drinks cans piled on top of each other, and various
vendors, visitors and patrons from the surrounding estates went
throughout the area, and most of those that traded by day slept there by
night, when generators, LCD lamps and lone light bulbs would power the
small roadside village until lights out.
The
unofficial market grew gradually, as both hired construction labourers
and opportunists who couldn’t afford to live in the expanding estates
nearby saw a way to not only provide services for themselves and the
estates’ dwellers, but also construct places to live in.
But all was demolished one day, presumably to make way for something important, though no one is sure what.
What
is left is an eyesore which stretches all along the road, a flatland of
rubble with the occasional dirt mound or discarded grey brick poking
through. On the far end, towards the dirt road leading to Lokogoma are a
cluster of leafless trees with jagged, broken branches pointing to the
sky. Dusty black nylon bags and pure water sachets dot the dreary
landscape, as well as flattened, faded plastic bottles, half-filled and
long forgotten bags of cement, old tyres and bits of wood, but most of
it is the loose, beige-red earth that characterises Abuja’s untreated
areas.
But
undeterred, the inhabitants of this temporary retail village are
returning, one by one. Amongst the rubble, one man has set up two low
tables, on top of which are four large basins in which he’s arranged
tomatoes in a pyramid. Nearby a grinding machine is grinding once more,
as two young women wait with their bowls of vegetables for the young man
to pour them into the blue funnel and grind them for stew.
Close
to the road a few people sit and stand around a bench, two or three
large umbrellas shading chairs and wares are nearby, and not too far
from them others sit on blocks of bricks. Another man has arranged
loaves of bread on a table, and towards the back an old bus has been
transformed into a store front where all kinds of goods are arranged
inside. Nearby, yellow flames from a small fire lick the bottom of a
black pot set upon large stones, as people mill around the ruins,
talking, buying, selling.
The
market village is only back to 30% of its original capacity, but in a
month or two its population will most likely be dense with structures
and activity once more.
By Kimberly Ward
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