Gardening II - Pots

My second step in planting my basil and dill was getting planting pots, since I wanted to keep them contained and mobile.

It's not as easy as you might think. I can't just pop over to Menard's, or Home Depot, or even Super Target (or whatever they call the one with the gardening shop). I thought I'd be able to get them in town easily enough, but when I asked my parents' driver/gardener where to get them, he said he had to think about it. Finally, a few weeks later, he told me we'd have to go to the outskirts of town, to a little village called Narraguta. I'd only been out that direction a few times, including a year ago when Mr. Magit took us to a leatherworks there. (That's where David got the shoes made for him and his groomsmen.)

So Friday morning, I got the baby into the carseat, hopped into the car, and Mr. Magit drove us to Narraguta. It's not a long drive, maybe 20 minutes. Some of the highlights along the way were:

• petrol queues and closed-down filling stations
• men pushing wheelbarrows full of sugarcane
• outdoor concrete floors about 8'x8' used as local prayer rooms
• a sign reading, "Say no to CULTISM. It ruins."
• a herd of Fulani cows roaming around a car wash

When we reached the shop (I use the term losely--there were a few hundred pots stacked along the road) in Narraguta, I got out of the car with Timothy and inspected the pots. Immediately, we were surrounded by a swarm of small children. They didn't laugh or talk, and when I said hello in Hausa to one little girl in particular who looked about three and wore the Muslim veil, they just looked at me. We picked out four pots that were a little bigger than I wanted (for a total of $6) because they only had one the right size, and the sellers helped me get them into the car. I smiled at the kids, and they followed me as I got back into the car. As we drove away, I waved, and they actually waved back--the first sign that they recognised me as another person!! My guess is they don't see white people very often.

Mr. Magit unloaded the pots when we got home, and put them by the kitchen door for me to fill with dirt later...

But I didn't get around to it.