Acceptance

Paul and I are going to the market early. I have to start over on a project. Our first stop will be a fabric store. Then we have to find a tailor. Third step seems to be the hard part: Communicating what I would like to have made. This project should have been simple. On round 1, I was clear about what I wanted. Nathalie understood what I wanted, and she was clear in her translation. But the tailor didn’t understand…clearly, the tailor did not understand. Because what I got was not what I ordered.

Instead of the boubou shirt, I got a classic man’s shirt with long sleeves, a collar, snap buttons…the kind of shirt I could buy at the Gap. Only a cheap shirt at the Gap would have been of superior quality to the one I got. It is so poorly made the snaps began falling off immediately, the seams are crooked, the buttons don’t match the holes. The shirt was obviously constructed without a pattern, and in that respect, the tailor is clever. But it’s crummy quality, and it’s not what I ordered

Even more maddening, though the tailor did not make what I ordered, he expected to be paid. And he refused to leave without his money. The business practices in Senegal require patience and language skills, and I’m short on both.

Another example: The guy across the street has been selling me baguettes for 150 cfa (35 cents) every morning for six weeks. Yesterday, he charged me 200 cfa. I paid it because he said the price had gone up. Later in the day, Paul bought bread and the cost was 150 cfa, just like always. The price only went up for me. It’s called the white tax. I pay more because I am white. These days, Aita won’t let me accompany her to the market because the merchants raise the prices when they see us together. She makes me sit in the car.

I understand the origins of this practice…maybe not totally, at the deepest level. I understand that colonialism is responsible. I understand. I don’t like it. I wish I had the language skills to argue when it happens.