Seeds of Plenty Read Online Free PDF

shopping as an excuse to escape.
    Outside her car window, a man lay down his colorful, woven plastic mat beside the road and knelt toward Mecca. Suya kebabs stuck out of a circular mound of mud, roasted by the flames in the center. Half-dressed children with protruding bellies crammed Made in China combs, Bic razors, and synthetic shirts through the open window of her car. Yellow, blue, and pink cement or mud houses with tin roofs lined the road. The skeleton of an unfinished tall building lay abandoned. The builder had run out of money. They travelled on a paved tarmac road, but in parts, the rain had already drilled deep holes, letting the road revert back to its original orange dirt identity. The charred remains of an oil tanker that had crashed into a mud hut and palm tree lay strewn on the side of the road.
    A mustard-brown mammy wagon stopped in front of her car at the wave of a hand by the roadside. Faces, arms, baskets, and chicken feathers stuck out of the wooden bars that sufficed as windows. On the back of the bus, someone had painted the words: Are you Ready? Jesus is Coming.
    When they reached the market next to the University of Ibadan, Ige parked the car under a large, shady acacia tree in the dirt lot. Sylvia wandered around the market by herself, browsing the stalls made of scraps of wood, cardboard, corrugated iron and rusty nails. Tins of Nido powdered milk, Elephant Power washing powder, mangos, and pineapples crammed the tiny stalls. Sellers squatted behind mats lined with neat piles of red chili peppers and tomatoes while other vendors, toting large baskets of eggs and fruit on their heads, wove their way through the vibrant crowd. A little boy pushed a deflated bicycle tire with a stick. Chickens and goats wandered through the decrepit stalls, colorful fruit, rotting meat, flies, and throngs of people. She found comfort in the cacophony. It reminded her of home, of the crowded night markets in Hong Kong full of fresh fish, headless frogs, and caged dogs.
    She stopped at one stall to buy some stiff, deep blue, adiera batik cloth that she used as tablecloths. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the African-English doctor. When she looked again, Ayo was buying fruit at a stall across the market. He was busy bargaining with the vendor and didn’t notice her.
    She continued to shop, wondering if he would see her. She was not hard to spot, the only Chinese woman in the market.
    “How much?” Sylvia asked.
    “Twenty naira, madam, good price for you,” the vendor said, a plump woman dressed in a yellow and green wrap with an alligator print.
    “This cloth is no good,” Sylvia said, shaking her head. “You try to charge me too much! Ten naira.”
    “Eh, you try to rob me? Fifteen, dat is my last price.”
    She started to walk off. The vendor called after her sulkily, “Okay, ten naira. Take it.”
    Suddenly, Ayo was standing next to her.
    “Not bad, really. Looks like you’ve got yourself a real bargain,” Ayo said, smiling. “You’re more of an expert at this than I am.”
    “Um…thank you.” She felt wary and embarrassed, remembering her last encounter and her state of mind. He must think she was a wreck. She looked up at him and noticed, in the bright African sunshine, his brown curly hair had hints of blond.
    “It’s bloody hot, isn’t it? How about we go inside get a drink?” Ayo said.
    She couldn’t help feeling drawn to him—his towering height and athletic physique, the jaunty, masculine way he moved, the deep brown of his skin. She followed him even though she knew she shouldn’t.
    They walked into the cool, air-conditioned supermarket across the street. Its large sign , Kingsway , seemed to boast of its superiority. The one Western supermarket chain in town, owned by a Lebanese family, it flaunted an interior lined with chrome shelves, metal carts, and German-made freezers. Perched on those pedestals were imports from the UK—jars of marmite, bottles of