Going to the market in Liberia is always an adventure, well leaving the ship at all is an adventure. Yesterday, Jen and I both were canceled from the ward, so we decided we would be brave and go to the market. We walked through the gates of the port and entered Africa (on the ship we are next to Africa but not in Africa). We stood by the road with our hand out, kind of waving in the direction that we would like to go, hoping that a taxi would stop and take us to the market. We stood there feeling very silly and watching taxi after taxi whizz right by us, with at least 7 passengers already in them. Then, a Mercy Ships Land Rover stopped and gave us a ride. It worked out perfectly. We then walked towards the "market" , I use this word in-quotes because it is by no means is anything like any market I have ever been to. It is a myriad of storefronts, Wheel Barrel stores ( a guy has a wheel barrel full of one kind of merchandise), and tarps of stuff on the side of the road. In some areas, it seems like a Liberian form of a mall. There are inside stores with lots of stuff and some of the stores are even upstairs (well up these uneven concrete things that kind of look like stairs). There are many things sold at the "market", we bought fabric, a serving dish (for my cookies that I often bake and share with friends, it actually looks like something from the summer collection from target), and Jen bought flip flops (slippers).
At one point we turned onto one of the side streets and there was a median-like structure in the middle of the road, but unlike our well-manicured western medians, it was actually a make-shift dump.
Once we accumulated all of our treasures and had enough hissing sounds and "white girl, white girl I love you!" yelled at us, we decided to venture back to the Ship. We needed to catch a taxi, which seems pretty much impossible. We tried a couple of different places, with our very best taxi catching wave with no success. So then we saw a large rock that we decided was a good idea to stand on so the taxis would see us better and then would definitely decide to stop. Many people just laughed hysterically and kept driving, but one taxi actually stopped and let us in. We got almost to our destination when we figured out that this taxi was being chartered by a woman. When they got to the point in the road where they needed to turn and we needed to go straight we got out and the woman said we didn't have to pay. What a blessing, we made it to the "market" and back to the Ship without even paying for a taxi.
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