Friday 8th March

Today was waffle day at 9.30 at Starbucks! Rude not to!!
After this Sharon took Dave and I to Niger market. It was really hot, cramped and quite crowded but amazing to walk through. There was all sorts for sale - meat, fruit and vegetables, dried smoked fish, spices, random boxes of medication (like penicillin, as well as paracetamol etc), toiletries, handmade crafts like bracelets, necklaces, bags, sandals, etc and clothes. The colours of the fruit, vegetables and spices were lovely. It would have made a brilliant photo, but people don't like it when you take photos so we didn't risk it. I wish I could have captured the sights, sounds and smells of the market - all the lovely stuff, everyone shouting and the lovely smells of the fruit, vegetables and spices, but maybe not the smell of urine!! There was just stuff everywhere and little alleys going off the main thoroughfare. Everybody wants the white people to go and look at their stuff, so we just got hassled all the way through. It was an experience!

At the edge of the main bit of the market Sharon found a stall selling football shirts. She has been trying to collect a football shirt from every place they have been to on the ship as a souvenir. They had a couple of different colours and as Sharon was deciding and asking the price one of the men ran off and came back with a different colour. They do that a lot here. If you say you want something they will run off and find what you want. They always know where to get stuff from, but then sometimes they want money for doing it so you have to be careful.

It was starting to get uncomfortably hot, so we decided to go for a drink and then head back to the ship. When we came out of the cafe and started walking down the street, our 'friend' from the football shirt stall suddenly appeared behind us offering to show us around the market. We tried to get rid of him saying we had already been around but he just kept following us. I stopped to take a photo of the outside of the market and another guy appeared saying I had to pay if I took a photo, but the other one said it was ok for me to do it. In the end he let me take another one.

We chatted with them for a while about Mercy Ships, where we were from, he compared his suntan with Dave's! then we tried to move on. They kept following us offering to do stuff for us, but in the end we managed to get rid of them.


When we were walking around a couple of people saw us and said "Mercy Ships" and when we said yes they said "very good" and "thank you for helping us" which was really nice.

When we arrived back at the ship a cruise ship had docked behind us for the day. Some of the people had come to have a look at Africa Mercy and a couple of officers came onboard for a tour. They later sent over some boxes of medication they had on board as a donation because they were so impressed with what the ship is doing.

In the evening we went out for dinner to a restaurant with good food and live music on a Friday and Saturday night. We had a lovely meal and the live band were really good.