My Maga quilt
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 08/May/2011 16:01, 34 days ago
The very beginning...The finished article!  Maga, for all its good qualities, is not a party town. If you don’t fancy going to plant some rice or chop some wood there is not a lot to do in your free time. And if your job is like mine and its not unusual for three out of five of your planned days of workedto get cancelled most weeksyou have a lot of free time. The evenings are also very long: the sun sets at six every evening. Sometimes, if I go out to a café at night and come back at the shocking hour of seven or eight in the evening the men who sit outside my concession make disparaging comments starting with “If you were my wife…”Anyway, having read most of the English books in the VSO office and watched all the films I had with me at least three times, I needed a new hobby. VSO’s old slogan used to be ‘Sharing skills, Changing Lives’ (now it’s had a re-branding and has the utterly anodyne slogan of ‘People First’), and fortunately the very talented Canadian volunteer Caroline Spira (check out her very beautiful quiltshereandhere) volunteered to share some skills with me and teach me how to make a quilt.After a quick quilting workshop with Caroline when I was down in Yaounde I was ready to get going. To start my quilt I needed some fabric, so I decided to go round the tailor’s shops in Maroua to ask for their cast off scraps from the fabric that is used for men’s robes, and comes in beautiful weaves and colours. The conversation in almost every tailor shop went exactly like this:Me: Djam na! (Hi, how are thingsin Fulfulde)Tailors: Djam kordemay (Fine)Me: Djam bandu? (How’s the health)Tailors: Djam kordemay (Fine)Me: Noy godlum? (How’s the heat?)Tailors: Godlum donne! (It’s pretty hot)Me: Noy kougal? (How’s work?)Tailors: Alhamdulillah (Praise be to Allahin an inexplicable shift into Arabic)Me: Alhamdulillah!I then would explain my fabric hunting mission, and almost universally (doubtless amused by my bad Fufulde and crazy sewing project) the tailors loaded me down with pieces of fabric in a myriad of colours, completely for free.The fabric in its intended purpose during end of Ramadanprayers in MarouaThe quilt itself took about two months and a lot of time and patience, but I’m very happy with the end result. I didn’t have a ruler, so the individual squares are all exactly the same size as a CD box, which was the best thing to draw around. When I’m back in England I’ll put wadding into it and sew on the backing fabric. Fortunately, given the 45 degree heat even during the night there is no rush to get it finished. I still have loads of beautifully coloured fabric scraps, so if anyone has creative ideas about what to do with them please let me know!Also, excitingly but sadly, my contract is coming to an end and I’ve booked a ticket home to England, leaving Cameroon on the 7thJune. To those of you in England, I’m really looking forward to seeing you.