Post by Lara
12 March 2013
In Sierra Leonean culture, having a few really nice outfits
is a must for weddings, funerals, memorial services, or regular services at the
local church or mosque. In Krio, we say
that someone is “bluffing” (i de blof)
when they are showing off very fine and stylish clothes, or showing off in
general. The word can have a negative
connotation in certain cases, implying that someone is showing off too much,
but we also tend to say it as a joke whenever we wear new clothes or get
fancied up for something.
The first event that we “bluffed” for was our meeting with
the President in Freetown. The Ministry
of Education generously provided all of us with outfits made from gara, one of
the most expensive types of fabric you can buy here. The gara clothes were all
expertly hand-dyed with patterns. My outfit was a short-sleeved shirt and a
skirt in purple and green. Kevin’s was a short-sleeved shirt dyed an
orange-brown color with stripes of darker brown. All 44 of us showed up at the President’s
house in our new outfits and took a photo with the President and several
government officials. (sadly we don’t
have a copy of the photo at the moment) For the first month or two we lived
here, that was our only dress-up outfit.
During training, we were offered the chance to hand-dye our
own gara and Kevin and I both jumped at the opportunity. We both chose to do
the “cloud” pattern of dying. Below is a
photo of us in the outfits we had made from our gara:
At the end of training, our swear-in ceremony was held on my
25th birthday, and for that and various other reasons I really
wanted to have some nice clothes to “bluff” that day. Kevin and I decided that we would go ashabi, which means “in uniform”—have
clothes made from the same fabric. This
is a very popular tradition among families here, especially for special events
like Christmas and the end of Ramadan.
When we went shopping for our fabric, we chose a style that we both knew
was loud and garish by American standards, but here our host parents simply
nodded and said, “This is fine” (remember: “fine” means good/great/pretty/etc.
here, so this wasn’t an American “oh, it’s fine I guess”—it was a real approval).
The next step was to take the clothes to
the tailor. Our host parents each have their own tailor who specializes in
men’s or women’s styles, so we went to the men’s tailor first and ordered Kevin
a long-sleeved button-down shirt. After
that, we walked across town to the women’s tailor and I took a few minutes
looking at the posters of different styles before choosing my own. The tailor then measured me and we agreed on
a price for the outfit. On the morning
of swear-in, our clothes were brought to our house just in time for us to jump
into them and head to the ceremony. Here
we are with our host parents after the ceremony, bluffing our ashabi styles:
Most recently, we sported new outfits to go to Lara's principal's wedding. Here we are just before leaving:
Since moving to site, we have added to our collection of
dressy clothes, aided substantially by the fact that Kevin has befriended a
fellow teacher at his school who is also a professionally-trained tailor. We now have several dressy outfits to choose
from and can show off our African style in several ways. As an added bonus, Lara has nearly perfected
the art of tying an enkicha
(head-wrap), because dressy occasions often call for a woman to cover her
head. Every time the tailor makes us
clothes, he leaves a descent sized piece to function as an enkicha if necessary.
That's the basic overview of dressing up here in Salone. If you have any questions or requests for blog posts we welcome them! Thanks!
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