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| That time I got Angela on a horse! |
This is the first blog in a short series about spring break and my adventures with Angela! My friend Angela came from San Diego for an 11-day visit. Background: Angela and I have been friends since junior high school when we were in drama class together at Tierra del Sol Middle School in Lakeside (San Diego County). I moved away to Oregon when we were 15, but we’ve kept in touch over the years. She’s stayed in San Diego, except for the 4-year stint at UC Berkeley, so I was able to visit when I’d go down to see family.
Over the years we’ve had some nice adventures together. She came to visit for a
couple of weeks when I was teaching in China, we’ve done road trips up and down
the West Coast, she’s stayed with me at Grandma Mert’s, and Aunt Marci’s. She flew
out from San Diego for my graduation from UD last May, which happened to fall
on her birthday! This time she made the long trek out to West Africa for some
epic adventures in this corner of the world!
We started off with pretty basic Senegalese necessities: The
national dish of ceebujen at Mama Soda’s and then off to the fabrics market,
HLM. We decided to eat our ceebujen (rice with fish and vegetables) in the
traditional style, meaning seated on the floor around the communal food bowl,
eating with our right hand (no left hand allowed makes it a bit difficult for a
lefty like Angela, but she managed well).
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| Angela and Mama Soda |
We also had homemade bissap juice (made
from the hibiscus flower), which is another staple in Senegalese households. As
we left, she offered us the rest of the bottle, so we decided to drop that off
at the apartment before heading out to HLM market. That also gave us a chance
to have some espresso as a quick pick-me-up to fight against the food coma we
were in because of the ceebujen!
I have a pretty good tailor here in Dakar who does a great
job fairly quickly, so I told Angela he could probably do whatever she wanted,
even if he only had 10 days. HLM is famous for its selection of African Wax
print fabric. This fabric has an interesting history because it isn’t actually
African! It was originally made by the Dutch, who were trying to copy the traditional
way the Indonesians used wax to dye their fabric. They figured out a way to
replicate their method using machines, although the quality wasn’t as high. It
didn’t catch on in Indonesia, but it became super popular in West Africa, so
they switched their marketing to West Africa. |
| Hundreds of stall like this = lots of choices!!! |
It usually costs
between 1,000 to 2,000 cfa a yard (that’s about $2-$4 a yard). The trick is to
find someone who is willing to sell it in smaller pieces than just 6 yards. The
fabric is shipped in 12-yard blocks, so some of them won’t do more than cut it
in half, selling at least 6 yards. For what we want to get done, we usually
only need 2-4 yards, so the first thing I ask when we enter a stall is whether
or not they’re willing to cut. Because I tend to be the one who takes Mama Soda’s
host students there to get their fabric, I’m getting to know the place fairly
well! There are a couple of places I know have a good selection, so we walked
around and looked at a bunch of stalls so Angela could get an idea of what was
available, then we started the real shopping. We went to one place I
particularly like because it has a really good selection and it’s already cut
and sorted by 2,3, and 4-yard pieces.
Angela found 4 or 5 different fabrics she
liked there, and I got a couple myself. Then we went back to another place
where we’d seen some things she liked and got a couple more. On our way out we
saw another fabric that was really nice, so she got that one too… she ended up
with 9 different fabrics! All fairly different. We spent the evening deciding
what she was going to have made with each fabric, since we had to go to the
tailor the next day and get everything started.
We went to Diouma on Sunday afternoon, gave him drawings and
pictures of what she wanted and he took her measurements. We went back on
Thursday to try everything on so he could do the necessary alterations. Then we
picked everything up, finished and awesome, on Friday! They were definitely
some awesome souvenirs! I definitely need to get one of these made:
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