Few good people in Lagos!

What an angel!

Apparently, there are a few good, kind hearted souls around here in Lagos, Nigeria!

This is based from my experience "grocery" shopping this morning. In order for our nanny to take care of our cats/apartment, I had to go to Shoprite to get some cleaning supplies and cat food supplies before we leave for our holidays tomorrow. Shoprite is a supermarket like Walmart in the USA or Cold Storage in Singapore. Except they are not as big and doesn't carry a big variety of food and other items. It is a supermarket chain from South Africa.

The problem around here is that one have to bring tons of cash everytime you go to the store. When I mean tons, doesn't mean I'm a millionaire or anything like that, ok! Just that we NEVER use our credit card here for our own security issue. Only cash and cash everywhere you go. So, I thought I brought enough cash till I was about to pay. I was wrong. Tried to pay using our local debit card, but out of the perhaps 8 machines they have there, NONE of them works! My total came up to N16, 535 thereabouts and I was short of about N500. Just so you know, N16,535 is about US$102 or S$133 for three bags of cat food, 15 bottles of mineral water, few cleaning supplies, two tic-tacs candy and four apples. Yup! It's outrageous the prices of stuff over here. So i was stuck at the cashier counter. I wasn't sure what to do. Thank goodness, this lady next to me have been "witnessing" all that have been happening to me and she graciously offered to pay the rest. I don't think she's Nigerian though nor is she an expat foreigner. She told me, "Don't worry, it's Christmas!". All I can do is, just say thank you and smile. Maybe it is just because it IS the holiday season. Otherwise, I wonder if she would have helped me if it's not Christmas!!

Things that cost me US$102 here!