THE MATERIAL

Apart from the church we also went to the Momboue market yesterday. The objective was simple: buy some material for my African dress (I'm having an African dress made for me!:). Sounds simple enough. The problems started when we saw how many different designs there were to choose from (see second picture).

You see, few women out here wear Western clothes and when they do, they are not nice clothes mostly. However, it is extremely common (and cheap) to buy the material you like and just have a dress or an outfit made to measure. And the ladies look amazing! The frocks are great and usually accompanied by a headscarf which makes them look graceful and even more beautiful. We thus went to the market and entered a couple of stalls, until in one of them (a very big one) we narrowed the choice down to three. The effect you can see in the picture.

Some of the materials are really out there, I must admit. It is common to have a dress with the pattern of Virgin Mary, Jesus or President Bongo. Not to mention maps of Africa or Gabon. Some of them had wise statements printed on them ("Every day brings a problem") and other ones just hearts and romatic inscriptions such as "Toi et moi". I went for a very mundane design, didn´t I?

After we bought the material, we asked the shop owner if we could take a picture of his lovely shop. He said yes and, after I took a couple of pictures, he demanded: "Moi aussi!". So he posed for me and I took his picture as well.

There was one more very interesting thing we saw in that shop. Apparently, when a couple gets married out here, they choose a material and all guests are supposed to wear outfits made of that material. So all shops are full of material samples with couple's names pinned to them. You just go and get a few yards of the material chosen and use it the way you like. Solves the "I have nothing to wear to Dagmara's wedding" problem, doesn´t it?