kayanan jamaka kyau
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 24/Nov/2010 12:11, 34 days ago
It’s not like I’m remotely reconciled to remaining here, but there is something rather fine when you can come to work in what are essentially pyjamas and everyone tells you that you look great.  I don’t – I pretty patently look like a pasty and rather tired Englishman dressed up in a Hausa costume like the tourist I am:But I can certainly live with it.  When I confessed to anticipating feeling like a total tit in local attire some time ago, Matt was kind enough to point out that such notable and marvellous men as Byron and Lawrence (him of the Arabia) looked pretty splendid in their‘native’ get up.  The only problem is, of course, that they’re both (assuming Lawrence looked anything remotely like Peter O’Toole) almost insanely beautiful and charismatic men, whereas I’m a bumbling slightly chubby shy dolt.      I came here with not very many clothes– certainly not many clothes for wearing outside of the office – partly because I was paranoid about not looking smart enough (and have I, even once, worn one of my two jackets or multiple ties?  of course not) and partly because you can get clothes made here much more cheaply than you can buy them new, and that’s all part of the merriment, right?But it’s all proved a bit harder than that, because getting clothes made is the very definition of the under used palaver.  As if having to choose fabric wasn’t tough enough (English masculinity leaves some serious gaps when it comes to living anywhere else), and then haggling for ages with no real confidence that you know what a fair price is, there’s the whole manic business of finding and dealing with a tailor.If anyone ever spent a few minutes wondering where all the Singer sewing machines went (I know I’ve passed many a lonely hour in similar occupations), you can rest easy: they’re all here.  In little rooms carpeted and walled and furnished with unused fabric or carelessly stored finished pieces; on stools in the market for quick repairs; on the heads of men wandering the streets who click scissors in a vaguely menacing way and presumably offer some kind of emergency service.  A friend showed me the tailor he uses (like everything else here, there’s no way I’ve discovered of knowing whether the shop with the sewing machine does women’s clothes; men’s clothes; unspecified sewing; or sells sewing machines.  And I’m still not confident enough in myself or my language to just walk in and ask), and off we go.Much of being tailored for made me feel magnificently aristocratic:‘just take this fabric my good man, measure me with that spool of tape, please.  You can take it down to here.  No, I dress on the left.’  That sort of thing.  It’s an entertaining (if unsettling: I know it’s how everyone operates here, but I feel constantly uncomfortable being a white man who orders Nigerians around.  I fought off a woman earlier who really didn’t want me to empty my bin and fetch my own water) role to play.  And there’s a big old game around deciding how patterned you’d like your caftan to be: the cost isn’t in making the thing (around 1,000N / £4) but in sewing the twiddly bits around the neck and cuffs (I do hope you admired them duly in the picture above).  The ones he wanted to give me cost 3,000N, but that seemed a trifle insane so (after a little wrangling) I got the cheapest possible at 200.  Which is, of course, still more patterning that I’ll ever wear on anything in Britain unless I swathe myself in a lacy doily one morning from a lack of clothes when the postman knocks.My tailor (how magnificent does that sound?  It’s like I’m a character in Virginia Woolf) was remarkably efficient and actually produced the whole kit and caboodle in a week – necessitating only a very lengthy wait on a sagging sofa while he finished off the trousers.  I find it bizarre, though, that despite measuring me pretty thoroughly (not between the nostrils though, as Ollivander does Harry) and being a professional tailor whose job it is to measure people and make clothes for them, I’ve ended up with a neck-hole (is there a word for that?) that necessitates a bit of a wrestle through which to thrust, and a top button that doesn’t do up.  Sigh.  I guess I’m even more blue blooded when I can languish on a sofa and complain that my tailor is a dear man but simply doesn’t measure up.Anyway, the point is that this is a highly comfortable outfit, in which I feel no more self-conscious than I do anyway here, and which is considerably cooler than anything I brought from home, and which makes me feel slim and elegant every time I tie the trousers which will still fit me comfortably when I’m pregnant with a beer belly and a pet tapir strapped to my waist.  And they’re just like pyjamas.  Now, if I could just find a duvet and a cup of tea at work…