{"id":423,"date":"2005-06-22T14:10:16","date_gmt":"2005-06-22T14:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/?p=423"},"modified":"2005-06-30T14:11:20","modified_gmt":"2005-06-30T14:11:20","slug":"akassa-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/archives\/2005\/06\/22\/akassa-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Akassa &#8211; Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another slow start to the day, with a leisurely breakfast and then a pleasant walk along to the market.  It&#8217;s quite a small market and most of the produce comes in on the &#8220;market boat&#8221; (the big one in the picture below left).<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/MarketBoats_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/MarketBoats_t.jpg\" alt=\"Market boat and canoes at Akassa market\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Market_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Market_t.jpg\" alt=\"Akassa market from the bridge\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We asked permission from a couple of stallholders to take their pictures and were then beseiged by people wanting to be snapped, even after we had explained that we couldn&#8217;t get prints back to them.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Stall1_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Stall1_t.jpg\" alt=\"Stallholders at Akassa market\" \/> <\/a><a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Stall2_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Stall2_t.jpg\" alt=\"Stallholders at Akassa market\" \/> <\/a><a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Stall3_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Stall3_t.jpg\" alt=\"Stallholders at Akassa market\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While we were at the market Jenny and I took the opportunity to buy some fabric.  Tartan-like patterns seem to be quite popular there, as well as patterns reminiscent of Andean textiles.<\/p>\n<p>We had been told that one of the local food specialities are &#8220;forest grubs&#8221;, these are the larvae of a beetle that lives in fallen palm trees.  The locals coat them in a spicy sauce and grills them on sticks.  For NGN20 we got four grubs.  Tracey tried one first, unfortunately I didn&#8217;t get the expression of nausea and disgust that immediately followed the photo below.  It&#8217;s difficult to put me off food, so I wasn&#8217;t too bothered by the grubs, but they don&#8217;t taste great so I probably won&#8217;t bother again.  Click <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Grubs.avi\">here<\/a> for a video of the grubs before they&#8217;re cooked (846Kb, Windows Media).<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/TraceyEatingGrub_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/TraceyEatingGrub_t.jpg\" alt=\"Tracey eating a forest grub\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/MeEatingGrub_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/MeEatingGrub_t.jpg\" alt=\"Me eating a forest grub\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our next destination was the community of Apparambie, some distance away along a path through the jungle.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/PathToApparambie_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/PathToApparambie_t.jpg\" alt=\"Path to Apparambie\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Jungle_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Jungle_t.jpg\" alt=\"Looking into the jungle along the path to Apparambie\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Apparambie_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/Apparambie_t.jpg\" alt=\"Apparambie community\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On our way we met the chairman of the local health post, who told us a bit about the village and then, as it started to rain heavily, invited us back to his house.  As we approached we were surrounded by a large crowd of children, some of them the grandchildren of the chairman.  They loved having their pictures taken.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/MeWithChairman_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/MeWithChairman_t.jpg\" alt=\"The chairman and I\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/TraceyShowingPicturesToKids_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/TraceyShowingPicturesToKids_t.jpg\" alt=\"Tracey showing the children pictures\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After the long walk back to Kongho we had a bit of a rest then wandered down to the jetty to wait for Pete and Mary to arrive on the boat from Yenagoa.  There was a bit of a mix-up, with the people on the first boat in saying that Pete and Mary&#8217;s boat had arrived first.  Ine went off to the jetty nearer her house, in case they had disembarked there, while Tracey, Jenny and I sat outside Mama Love&#8217;s bar.  Pete and Mary arrived shortly afterwards.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/PeteAndMaryArrive_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Nigeria\/Akassa\/June05\/PeteAndMaryArrive_t.jpg\" alt=\"Pete and Mary's boat arrives\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Later on that night we returned to Mama Love&#8217;s for dinner, the usual rice and <a href=\"\/_static\/site\/NGglossary#stew\" class=\"glossary\">stew<\/a> as well as a very pepperish fish pepper soup.  It was lovely sitting there in the evening, apart from the sandflies mounting a determined attack on our ankles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another slow start to the day, with a leisurely breakfast and then a pleasant walk along to the market. It&#8217;s quite a small market and most of the produce comes in on the &#8220;market boat&#8221; (the big one in the picture below left).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","category-vso"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}