I’ve lost my voice and Jama spent a couple hours this morning foaming at the mouth. Contrary to expectations, I don’t have malaria, and she doesn’t have rabies. Good thing too, as there was a rabies vaccine shortage when I was getting shot up to come out here and I didn’t get one, but the tentative diagnosis wasn’t totally unfeasible as we do have bats living in our ceiling. Luckily it seems like Jama’s obsession with catching and eating bugs, as well as tasting every plant in the garden (of which there’s hundreds of varities) caught up with her and she ate something poisonous—her body’s reacting normally by giving her a comic foamy beard that drips frothily all over the kitchen floor.

I also just received my first custom-made dress, wheee! It’s a steep learning curve, having clothes made here. Luckily I have a friend who didn’t mind me tagging along on some things she was having made by her tailor Isabelle, and copying some dresses that she’d had done previously.

Isabelle measured what seems like every single part of my body—distances and lengths I had never even considered before. I’d bought pagne cloth willy nilly without much thought and she pointed out that she couldn’t make one dress I was copying because the fabric wasn’t elastic, so we had to rework it. The tailors here provide all of the buttons, zippers, thread, and fabric liners at a small cost, and it’s nice not having to worry about those things, because I’m sure I’d forget about all of them. I made the oh-so-ignorant mistake when she told me the cost was $25 of asking “pour un or deux robes?” (one or two dresses?). It was obviously for both and she just gave me this Look and laughed, and I had to as well, because it was so blatantly obvious that if she’d wanted to rip me off I would have had no idea. She neglected to return about two yards of leftover fabric to me but I’m going to let it slide. With most of the panya cloth I bought costing around $2 - $6 a yard, two dresses costing $25 to make, and taxis for the tailors from their neighborhoods to your house (always pay for their transport) around $3, I can begin to see why expat women here go nuts having things made. It’s so inexpensive, plus there’s the added bonus of supporting local tailors. When $10 a day is decent income in Kinshasa you can bet that they do pretty well if they can break into the clothing-obsessed expat scene, where they can charge more than they normally would because we’re white. Isabelle is speedy and probably gets through a couple dresses at least in a day. The tailor I photographed and featured the other day probably just works out of his shop for the people in his expat-free neighborhood and I bet he doesn’t charge as much as Isabelle.

Papa Bob is the tailor we use to make our actor’s costumes, and he rides a bicycle all over Kinshasa in the heat to make things at people’s houses, with his sewing machine and supplies in a backpack. Most of the tailors here I’ve encountered like being able to work at the locations where their clients live or work—especially if they get a shady spot under the trees, a long table to work on, maybe an electric fan, and cold sodas whenever they like.

I had to send one dress back to be taken in a little, but the other one is perfect. Nothing like having strapless dresses custom-fit. And now I’m going to go grab some Congolese chicken and foufou from the kitchen in the backyard to soothe me and Jama’s woes. Perhaps fried plantains will help bring my voice back.