...and other short stories.
***
One morning, as I woke, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I realized I was ever so slightly late for school.
(Unedited version: I rolled out of bed a screaming ball of bedhead and blankets because I should have been walking out the door by then.)
I hurried through my morning ablutions and ran gracefully out the door, where I prettily asked the guard and the house worker whether they had change for a taxi.
(I brushed my teeth, stabbed myself in the eye repeatedly with eyeliner before finally giving up, and tripped out the door because I'd forgotten there were stairs outside the house that I'd been living in for the past three months. I realized I only had 10 000cfa notes and if I gave one to a taxi-driver, he would likely look at me as though I'd stolen one of his kidneys. I asked the guard and housemaid in butchered French to cough up some dough.)
Our house worker graciously gave me some change.
(She threw a note at me and put her hands up in the air, begging for her life because she had three children at home.)
I found a taxi relatively quickly, and he shared an absolutely hilarious anecdote in French. I laughed all the way to school, and started my day feeling as fresh and cool as a daisy-shaped cucumber.
(I did actually find a taxi quickly. Too quickly. The dude said something about policemen and how they were as useful as a three-headed monkey/fish hybrid. I laughed. He burst into a full-fledged diatribe about his first time driving a taxi and meeting a policeman. I have never pretended to laugh so hard in all my life. I literally laughed all the way to school, all the while thinking of England, as it were. Thank God for talkative taxi-drivers and the ability to read social cues. Usually, taxi drivers can spot my I have no clue what you're saying, but I will smile feebly until you stop asking questions look from a mile away. This one would have rated me a top conversation partner. And life partner. Thus by the time I escaped, I felt hot, frazzled, and like I never wanted to laugh in all my life. When the guard welcomed me into the school, I glared at him. My face and my brain battled for a while. The guard scuttled away. My brain won and I smiled happily at his back. Onto high school math.)
***
I had some precious, precious cloth. I wanted a specific design because I am picky, but also because some African designs look like Picasso and Van Gogh collaborated to create one cotton canvas, cut off each other's ears, and then continued painting until every color was used, and every shape was cubed.
The irrepressible SA happily took me to a tailor because she didn't know what she was getting into. I had pictures drawn up, but while my brain tells me that I should be able to sew the darn thing myself, it's that easy, my mouth sputters French and English words that make it sound like I want to re-create Avatar using only the tools in the shop.
I wanted a very Indian design, and I truly did not think it would be that hard to have a Malian tailor recreate my vision exactly--
Alright, I'm an idiot.
It was so hard to get one idea out of my brain, into SA's, into another language, and into the tailor's brain that I might as well have been telling them to perform open heart surgery.
In the end, the tailor recreated a vision. Out of his own imagination. That involved me wearing a too-small shirt with giant blue stripe across the middle of my chest. Like a superhero. (In all fairness, I had wanted a band at my waist. He just took my measurements and regarded them more as guidelines than rules. Like a pirate.)
I have yet to see the finished products, but right now I'm just hoping I'll be able to wear this thing as he's having to redo quite a bit of it with minimal left-over cloth. I half imagine that the next time I go there, it'll be small enough to fit a toddler and he'll be encouraging me to try it on with all the hope of a sotrama conductor trying to fit me into 10 cm of space beside someone's bucket of bananas and atop a small child.
***
I visited another tailor with SA. She explained everything I wanted. In detail. And then asked the price. It was too expensive. SA - being a decisive, cut-and-dry person - immediately grabbed the cloth out of his hands and made to leave. He desperately asked how much it should cost, and she halved his original price.
He caved like a house of cards and said it'd be ready tomorrow. Which could mean that he realized he overcharged. Or it could mean he's such a terrible tailor that he has no business whatsoever and could be making me a giant blue potato sack as we speak and wondering how to pitch it to me.
"Yes, yes! Is good!"
No. No, it's not.
"Yes? Is good?"
It looks nothing like I wanted.
"Yes! Is good! If you want, I can attach something suitably awkward over your chest, too!"
So I later went back with SG to clarify a few things. I went with a pencil and paper so I could at least draw what I wanted. The tailor grabbed my pencil to take my measurements again. When it was all said and done, I smiled and stuck out my hand because I am a horrendously awkward excuse for a human being. Looking slightly confused, the tailor shook my hand.
Tailor: ...?
Me: What? Why are we...? What is happening?
Tailor: Well.
Me: *awkward turtle*
Tailor: Um... You are... uh... very nice... (for a psychopath)
Me: I am somewhat frightened to stick my hand out again, but please give me my pencil back.
TBC
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