I enjoyed a good night of sleep once again, getting a bit closer to my
normal sleeping and waking times. I slept from 10:00 pm to nearly 6:00 am, which put me in good shape for the day’s activities. After eating breakfast, I was looking forward to a busy day
in town. First up was the need to get the cloth that I bought yesterday to the
tailor that SIL colleagues recommended, so that he can make it into shirts for
me, a dress for Anita, and a shirt for a friend, as I mentioned in yesterday’s
blog.
To get to the tailor’s shop—and for the rest of the activities I had
planned for today—I arranged yesterday for a Senegalese man name Touré Seymi to
accompany me. (That name is pronounced something like “Today Say Me”.)
Touré and I at the center
Touré showed up at 8:30 am, as he had promised yesterday, so he got a
brownie point right from the start for being on time. He took me to the best
place to catch a taxi, then instructed the taxi driver where to take us. I paid
the taxi fare. Touré had been given directions in my presence last evening for
getting to the tailor’s shop, but I could tell that he wasn’t understanding
them completely. Fortunately, the person who gave him the directions also gave
him the tailor’s phone number, so as the taxi drove in the general direction of
the shop, Touré used his cell phone to call the tailor and ask him for
specifics. We made a couple of wrong turns and at one point had to make a
u-turn in the middle of a busy street, but we eventually made it to our
destination.
After introductions, I showed Yéro (“yay, dough”), the tailor, the shirt (mine) and
outfit (Anita) I had brought along that he could use to get the measurements
right as he made the new articles of clothing. I clarified for him just how
many of which kind of clothing I wanted made from each type of cloth. Then I
asked him how much all of this would cost me. His price is a bit more expensive
than I’ve been in the habit of paying in Burkina Faso, but as I discovered today,
prices in general here in Senegal seem to be higher than in Burkina. The cost
of sewing each shirt will be about $9, and Anita’s outfit will cost us about
$12.50. That’s in addition to the cost of the material itself. While his prices
are a bit higher than I’ve paid before, I’ve been assured that his workmanship
is of high quality, so I made a downpayment of a bit less than half of the
total bill, and we left everything in his care, to be collected again when I
come back to the capital city in about two weeks.
The cloth for Anita
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