The PCV's New Clothes

My dressmaker has taken to calling me if she doesn't see me promptly every week.  I think this means I have had too many clothes made.  Or possibly, not enough.

Pants from Zanzibar.  With shirt made by my dressmaker. 

That pants that go with the shirt.  Tanzanians wear
shirts and pants of the same fabric, but that would just not be as
interesting.  The red pants ended up being too tight and ripped at the crotch
when I sat cross-legged, so I don't actually have 1 extra pair of pants out of this.  

Dress with bandanna, in case I need to a ninja turtle.

Formal dress I wear to teach in. 

butterflies

More butterflies. 

You Must Be the Fabulosity you Wish to See

I like my new dressmaker, possibly even better than my Morogoro dressmaker (which is good, since I was a little worried about being able to find a good one at my new site.  Unimportant priorities, I haz them.)  And that I am good friends with the mamas in the corner of the market around her shop.  I don't have to plan my dresses anymore, my dressmaker, mama Asha, in consultation with the other mamas, decides what I should be wearing. She asks me how I want things to fit, and if I tell her she does a good job she modestly tells me it is because I buy good fabrics.  Which I do, but she is really really good at putting the fabric together.  Cutting up patterned fabrics to make a lovely dress is an art and not necessarily easy, even for people in the states who have giant cutting boards and clean floors on which to spread out the fabric and think.   Once she finishes my dresses I try things on in her shop to make sure they fit in case she needs to make adjustments and then the market mamas have to see how it fits as well and tell me how pretty I look.  Which is nice if I've been feeling particularly dirty recently.  Also, I am fulfilling my Peace Corps goal of being a combination status symbol and entertainment option for the local peoples.

The bottom part of the skirt has these clever folds in it. 

Tanzania's Ugliest Kanga, Half Now in Skirt Form

Anyone can dress in a drab and unimaginative yet inoffensive fashion.  Americans, for example, are wedded to their jeans and t-shirt uniforms.   It takes planning and a good dressmaker to be this much of a fashion disaster.  The other half of the kanga is going to a friend of mine in the states, in exchange for a book of raunchy classical Latin poetry.  This seems a fair trade.

I am very pleased with this dressmaker, really.  I had such a fabulous dressmaker in Morogoro, I was worried about finding another lady. They are everywhere, really, but one has to find a good one who can surprise with the arrangement of the fabric.  Also, a good friendly relationship is important.  In this case, the border of the kanga was turned into a waistband and a ruffle along the bottom, which I rather love.  There is a small morning market near the school, and the first time I went there, I got the usual calls of "mzungu"* and gave my usual response, which is a long Kiswahili speech about how I have a name and people should greet me, after all, it's not like I yell "mtanzania" or "mafrica" at people.  The result was that now an entire group of mamas in one corner of this market remember my name, I buy things from them, they help me find things, keep other people from hassling me, I am learning their names, and overall going to the market is now a very pleasant experience.  I asked one of these mamas about finding a dressmaker and she directed me to a friend of hers, who made this skirt for me, after which I had to show it off to the mamas in the market who are my new friends and who all have opinions about what sorts of things I should get made next.   This is why I have too many clothes.  But I abandoned quite a few that I wasn't so pleased with back in Morogoro, so I have to start over now.

*white person/foreigner.  It's nice that my entire character can be summed up in a single word that describes my race that complete strangers can and do yell at me.  

In Which I Succeed in my Little Advertised Quest to Find Tanzania's Ugliest Kanga

It has silly fish on a terrible mustard yellow background.  I actually saw this in Mwanza some time ago, but it was only at a wholesale shop that would not let me buy just the one and I didn't love the hideousness enough to buy 10.  But now it is mine and it will be a hideous skirt, and I will wear it.  Next up, the quest to find the kanga which is of mediocrity the epitome.   After I find it I will realize that mediocrity, by its nature, doesn't really epitomize, and the kanga will vanish in a puff of logic.  

Usigeuke miba ukanichoma, which might mean, may you not turn
away from the thorns you stabbed me with.  Cuacrossamerica, help!  Translate!  

Edited to add: second and third opinions on the kanga suggest it should be translated "Don't turn away Thorn, you have stabbed me" or "you shouldn't turn from every thorn that stabs you."  These kanga sayings are written in Ye Olde Kiswahili and are difficult for us non-native speakers to figure out.

Edited again to add: The second opinion is right, thorn has to be vocative, otherwise it would be usigeukia.  (I think).  You know what would be helpful here?  Punctuation.  

Edited once more to include an image of a Bolivian textile, helpfully emailed to me to demonstrate sublime ugliness.  I find it more boring than eyecatchingly ugly, but I know you, my darling readers, are well versed in aesthetics and well be able to educate me on such ugliness.

Echoes of Vacation

My camera has been miraculously healed as of yesterday after dying sometime in Uganda.  So I have pictures of the fabric I bought in Mwanza and Kampala.

Some of the lovely shiny fabric with belt of complementary colors
that is typical of the well-dressed Ugandan lady

My new dress from pretty fabric from Mwanza

Kanga from Mwanza.  Cha kukupa sina ila nakuombea salama
["I give to you without flaw asking for peace"?  maybe?]

In Which I Tour a Textile Factory

Peace Corps Tanzania is making commemorative kangas for us all, for the 50th anniversary celebration stuff last year (50th anniversary of Peace Corps itself, and Peace Corps in Tanzania, one of the first posts to open).  Last year was also the 50th anniversary of Tanzania, so lots and lots of celebrations, and after a lot of arguing over design, this kanga is now finally going to production.  The reason I know about this is that the largest factory in East Africa is 21st Century Textiles, which is apparently in Morogoro, and they are making our kangas.  Which I still wouldn't have known about except that I and my sitemate were nominated to go proof some kanga samples pre-production on the basis of geographic proximity.  It ended up taking three hours, between waiting for them to set up a machine, prepare the dyes, run the sample through the washing and drying machine to ensure the dye would set, and have me approve the start of production.  We took the waiting periods to wander around the factory, during which time I had flashbacks to every story I have ever read featuring orphans suffering in the terrible, noisy, hot, and dangerous factory conditions of back in the early days of the industrial revolution, when girls working at looms in textile factories had to cut their hair short or risk it getting caught in the machines, and sometimes they'd lose fingers, and have to work 10 hour days for about 2 cents an hour, and stagger home exhausted to abusive parents who took their wages and spent it on booze.    At the end of the tour and having approved the kangas, we were asked to speak to the factory owner, because he was extremely confused about why 2 American girls who lived in Morogoro were wandering around his factory.

the factory

newly printed fabric coming off a machine

barrel thing for printing the peace corps design

Prepping the barrel things: dye is pumped inside, and the machines turn the barrels.  As the fabric passes underneath, the barrels, it picks up the dye, 1 color per barrel.  I do not entirely understand how this works.  Why do the white parts stay white?

preparing the dye

making some adjustments to the barrels

our kangas!

other fabric being printed

and more fabric

a folding machine

piles and piles of fabric

Dresses in Tanzania

To have clothes made in Tanzania, one goes to fabric stores, buys fabric, and takes it to another shop where nice people with sewing machines will make whatever you can draw for them or whatever you point to of the pictures they have on the walls.    These are the ones I have had made thus far.     

Kanga Line

One of my favorite aspects of Tanzanian clothing is the kanga, which is just a piece of cloth used as a woman's wrap.  Or curtain.  Or towel.  Or strainer.  Or baby sling.  Whatever a big piece of cloth can be conveniently used for.  They come in sets of two which must be cut apart and hemmed (there are many shops around featuring people with sewing machines more than happy to do this for you), and then you have two big convenient pretty pieces of cloth.  They all have a nice border and an inspirational saying in Kiswahili on them.  Thus far I have four:

Tunaomba salama/We ask for peace

Wema wako malipo utayakuta kwa Mungu/Your goodness pays for you will meet God. [-ish.  This one confuses me grammatically.  What's with the ya infix in utakuta?] I have just been informed that this means "the payment for your good deeds you will find in God."

Wema na ubaya upo lakini tusameheane/Goodness and badness are here but we forgive.  

Kila jambo jema hupangwa na Mungu/Every good thing is arranged by God.