Today we enjoyed the supreme service of African enterprise mixed with hospitality. When we bought the bicycles from a shop near the market, we also bought a length of waxed cloth, a very African design, and asked the shopkeeper if he knew a tailor - fundi cherahani . He pointed to a man sitting right next to his shop with a sewing machine, a tape measure round his neck and a book to write notes in. This fundi doesn’t speak a word of English, but people are so friendly and bemused that wazungo would have clothes made in this way, that young people, especially, simply step forward and help. So it was that we were measured for a shirt and a skirt respectively, with about a dozen onlookers smiling approvingly, agreed a price and a date for collection. Today was that day. We were not disappointed. We sipped Stoney Tangowezi (ginger beer) and sat in the shade, as he finished a kanga for Caroline.
I saw a fine piece of cloth hanging on some clothes line behind his head and negotiated a price for a suit. Caroline actually negotiated the price up, which made him laugh. I might be a bit shorter, about two stone heavier and white; but I swear, with the suit that this fundi is making for me, I’ll be the spitting image of Julius Nyerere.
After he’d noted down all the measurements and made a small drawing of the suit in a margin, using his biro – who needs CAD? – I asked if he knew where I could get a key cut. He took me round the back of the bus station, to a man with a small box of keys, screws, bits of metal, a hack saw and an old tyre. He was working on the pavement, using the tyre as his form; and in half an hour he had cut my key. It works perfectly.
Life here is beginning to become quite fun. We buy freshly made samosas and doughnuts for breakfast, each morning. We eat freshly made rice and meat each lunch-time and drink cold beer, looking out over the ocean each evening. We cycle everywhere and people call “Mambo” or “Wazungo! Habari za subuhi”. We feel like celebrities now, so wait ‘til they see me in the suit and see what they think then.
I’ll show you a picture and you can judge for yourselves.
what a lovely story!
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