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Published: February 10th 2006
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Mobile Phone - Uganda Style
People by air time to use this phone. The owners can easily move their shop from place to place. Buying Fabrics in Kampala
Another great day…now that we are wandering around, we are meeting people who live here, so we don’t feel so out of place. I’ve been meaning to write about how quiet people speak here, not just on their cell phones, but in ordinary conversation. Plus, the more into a bargaining situation, the more quiet they get. So, we are learning to be soft-spoken.
Hussein was 50 minutes late; when I called after waiting 30 minutes, he answered, Marie I am coming, don’t worry. He said that he got stuck behind a broken down trailer hauling a freight container, and couldn’t get around. A plausible story, since we saw one truck with a container on the back, the container was so heavy that the front wheels barely touched the ground, towing another trailer with an equally heavy container. But, that put us way back for the day.
The day before, the African waiter at the Indian café had finally comprehended what cloth I am looking for, when I finally figured out the correct way of asking: where your mother/grandmother go to get the cloths for their skirts. Hussein got us to the general area.
People here are
FedEx is Here
Thought this was a unique FedEx vehicle so friendly and helpful, even when it isn’t quite what we need. After wandering around William St and Loom St, and not finding any African cloth, several ladies told their man to take us to…Veronica, the proprietoress of a tailor shop, about a 10-minute walk. She did have some fabric, and she gave us a price, and I attempted to bargain, and she refused to sell it to me.
Instead she sent HER man Henry to take us back to the same general area, one street off William St. and Loom St, only to discover that all of the shops had no electricity, part of the previously mentioned rolling blackouts, so we decided that we can return later. Back we went to Veronica…I showed her the collage of quilt pictures that I have been carrying around and she is the FIRST African to comprehend quilt-piecing. She asked how much we sold these for, and we explained that we make and give away, which totally astonished her. So, I made a square, and then cut into 8 pieces and showed her how to make a pin wheel, and so she did, in fact, discount the two pieces of cloth that
Warm Beer and Lousy Food
We don't know if this is just honesty in advertising or whether this restaurant is one you want to avoid. we wanted, and then gave me a HUGE bag of scraps, no charge, it is the schooling tuition she said, so now I am honor-bound to send her some quilt magazines.
She has an assembly line of sewing machine men. One is amazingly talented at doing decorative stitches with the most ordinary of machines. For those who know quilting, he is quite capable of stitching on the line of Jane Sassaman’s quilts that sell for thousands of dollars. Veronica has the design sense and her men will execute, I have no doubt, so long as I send her info. One man only embroiders, the other sews only straight seams and assembles.
Veronica stitches up both African traditional dress designs and modified western style. We are really tempted to go back to have her design a garment for me, although I am sure that it couldn’t be finished by the time that we left.
She took us over to the minibus stand and negotiated our price, 500 shillings each and got us on board. So we have now traveled by private tour minivan, S&N’s Land Rover, motorcycles, and minivan. Sarah says that the Africans at the Embassy are quite
Marie & Veronica
Veronica owns a clothing design shop. She was very intrigued with our quilting and gave us a whole bag of fabric cutoffs. impressed with our daring!
Back to the Indian restaurant, got a thali each, so once again, overate, picked up Bill’s shirt and to the Internet café. Met up with S&N who took us to their club, we updated our travelogue sites and they jogged on exercise bikes, very strange in this place!
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