Another time again in the market place. This time around I was offered a confirmation of a great lesson life has taught me: Assumptions are untested hypotheses that are most likely to be wrong. The truth about anything is ascertained most certainly after it is experienced.
Photo source: All Nigeria Info
Before visiting the market, I had a meeting with an acquaintance. We went to a provision store together to get some items for a meal. The price of the goods caused a jaw drop. It forced the comment from his mouth: 'You sure say to leave this country no be the better option?'
How valid can his opinion be?
After about an hour-thirty minutes of productive conversation, I went to the market to supply the orders sent from my Uncle. This time around, I took on his advice to survey other shops in the book sellers cluster close to the Terminus market in Jos. I sampled over 10 shops.
During my survey, I saw books I never thought were available in Jos. And in Nigeria even. There were so many great titles that I did not keep track of them. I could not but confess to one of the book sellers that I have always had this vague assumption about the availability of resourceful books in Nigeria without making any enquiry. 'That is why you don't just assume when you haven't asked', she said with a pleasant smile on her face. 'That is how we learn everyday'. Whenever I discover something I needed to have known, sometimes, I feel embarrassed. However, I need not know what I do not know prior to knowing it. So I consider such opportunity with humility, inquisitivity, and curiosity.
Another shocker is the availability of board games in the cluster of the book shops I surveyed. Sometimes last year, I went to purchase Monopoly but did not find it in four bookshops I checked around the entry area of the market. I did not go in to ask the other shops. I settled for another alternative instead: Scrabble. Going beyound the surface, beyound the entry area, was all that was needed for me to find what seemed absent and unavailable in the whole market.
Talk about prices. The books I purchased in the past few days had different price tags in all the shops I visited during the survey. The store I purchased from since my first survey for the purchase is the lowest in the market. All the others had overwhelming prices. An obvious factor is that all the others had lesser commodities than the store I purchased from. I expected a lesser price at a different store but the case was other wise.
Should I have been more thankful or whatever?
For all book lovers, bibliophiles and bookworms alike residing in Jos: Rwang Pam street is your go-to market area when seeking any book at all. You will find most of the books you want in any of those stores and probably to your amazement.
Part 1: Of Unwritten Principles
Part 2: Of Unwritten Principles 2
Part 3: Of Unwritten Principles 3