La drame des tailleurs (the tale of 3 tailors)

at the end of my first week in dschang, i am starting to feel routine set in. i'm becoming comfortable in my surroundings and getting used to the structure of family life, daily walks, class time and social time. not too much homework yet, but i'll have more next week -- readings, cultural observations, a group presentation etc.

tomorrow we're taking a class fieldtrip to fongo tongo (a neighboring town) and hiking to "la chute de Mamy Water," a regionally famous waterfall. on sunday i'll return to fongo tongo with thomas (my friend from french camp) to visit his childhood home, the chief compound -- he is one of many sons of the chief (chiefs sometimes have as many as 250 wives, no joke). i cant wait -- this weekend is going to be a blast!

the tale of 3 tailors is this:
on monday i took my first pagne (length of fabric, 2 yards to be exact) to be tailored at Leon's, a host father of a student on the program and well-known for the beautiful bags he makes. he is from the same town as another concordia language village alum, gustave river who was my counselor my first year at CLV, so we had a connection and got on great. on wednesday i went shoppingduring the lunch hour for more fabric with marissa (an SIT student) and her mom yvette, and bought 2 more pagnes. her mom took them back home with her where i could pick them up later ( marissa lives right next door, we share a wall). i had talked to my mom about getting a shirt/culotte set like the one she has, and she said she knew a tailor who did great stuff and she would call her. but when i went to pick up my fabric at marrisa's on wed. night, another tailor was there to measure me! i couldn't say no -- yvette had called her specially, and she turned out to be another mother of a student on my program. then this morning on my way out the door, a woman came by our house -- it was the tailor my mother had called. so she measured me right there, i got to school 15 minutes late, and now have 3 pagnes between 3 tailors. just plain silly.