This week has been a momentous week. For starters, I sallied forth to the market unattended. I was in search of chiponde (peanut butter). It took me three tries to light upon the right shop, and to my shame, I probably only found it as quickly as I did, because of the English that the merchants knew rather than my Chichewa, but still pangona ndi pangona (little by little).
The other momentous event is that my Malawian dress is finished. Before coming, I had planned to have a dress made. I only brought three dresses as I a)wanted to live simply and b) didn't want to bring a ton of clothes just to find that they were unsuited to the environment. As far as the second reason goes, it has been vindicated.
Two of the dresses that I brought could pass muster as work garb for a teacher in the US. I am, however, in Malawi. I had remembered from my first visit that women in Malawi are a lot classier than Americans typically are. I think that I am saying the truth, when I say that on the 2021 Holy Rosary Trip all of us women felt pretty dumpy and under dressed most of the time.
Well, I thought that what I was bringing would be fine. At least there were no pants in my suit case. It is only common for women to wear pants in the big cities. I have only seen one girl in Namwera wearing pants and Sr. Mphatso informed me, "She did not leave the house like that." Sister surmised that she left with a chitenji on hiding the jeans.
Anyway, back to the point. I am always at least a step or two below the class in which my female co-teachers are dressed, so having the dress made has been a high priority.
I went to the big Wednesday market and picked two matching chitenjis(4500MK, $4.50 each) and with, Sr. Mphatso went to a tailor's stall. (As you've probably gathered, Sr. Mphatso is my gaurdian angel. She is my Chichewa teacher and is good enough to act as my translator and cultural guide until I become fluent.) The tailor shop that Sister wanted to go to was closed so we went home.
That afternoon we went back. I showed a picture to the tailor of what I wanted, paid half in advance and went home hopeful. The picture was of this dress.
It is a wrap around. The tailor was not familiar with wrap arounds, but took a picture of my phone and said he would try his best.
The next day it was ready, but . . . It was not a wrap around. The front had a kind of cross over, but the dress had to pull over my head. I happened to be wearing a sweater that was loose and showed the tailor how a wrap around works. He understood, but said he could not adjust the dress as he had used all the fabric -- the skirt was very full. I remembered that the chitenji salesman had said he had three in the pattern I had chosen, so we went to see about getting a third chitenji so that the tailor could fix it. Well the booth was closed, so the tailor said that he would ask when it opened. But, . . .The last of the matching chitenjis had been sold and neither of the other two chitenji stalls had the pattern either.
Well, the merchant said that when he went to restock, he would look for the pattern. I was in luck and he came back with the pattern! A few days later the wrap dress was done and Sr. Mphatso picked it up when she went to pick up some groceries, but . . . the top didn't fully close now that it was a wrap and the top was predominantly a brown color which quite frankly on its own is rather ugly and does not look nice next to my face.
Well, I was not going to be one of those customers who just won't be satisfied. I paid back Sr. the remaining 3000MK for the dress and said that I loved it (not a lie, because I loved the fabric and the potential in it). At supper I asked Sr. Florence if there were any sewing machines that I could use to tweak my dress to make it fit better.
Saturday morning, Sr. Florence took me to the now closed technical college next to the parish. Girls who weren't cut out for secondary school used to be trained as tailors here, but the funding ran out and now the big hall with sewing machines and surgers stands unused. There were still drawings of pattern pieces on the chalk board.
Well, I went to work. I disassembled the top, totally redoing the front and sleeves, and changed the order of the skirt panels. It was a full day of work with lots of mistakes as it has been a long time since I sewed anything, and I had never used a non-electric treadle sewing machine before, but at the end of the day, I had a dress that I am very happy with!
In total the fabric for the dress cost around $17.50,and the labor cost around $6.
What did I learn? Well, if I go to a local tailor again, I won't asked for anything out of the ordinary. When making something they are familiar with, the tailors do a fine job, and I really want to support the local economy. As the plastic grocery bags say, "Buy Malawi, Build Malawi." But. . . those treadle sewing machines are a lot of fun!
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