After Easter, part 1

This photo was taken after Easter but is otherwise irr-elephant.

After the Octave, the Easter season lasts for another six weeks. Life went on at the mission, and left me with plenty of stories. 

The Dress

The day after my birthday (very aptly named "Low Sunday", as we come down the liturgical mountain from Easter), Canon Fragelli told me at lunch that we would go to the tailor that afternoon. It was then that I realized that the fabric he had given me on my birthday was destined to become a custom-made dress. 

We drove to the market after lunch; Canon dropped me and Martha off to go see the tailor, whose shop was directly across from the "Hobby Lobby" where we had gone on the feast of St. Benedict. The tailor was a Muslim, so we waited quietly for him to finish saying his prayers on his rug. As he led us into his shop, he seemed to want to think my name was Marie. Martha told him no, "La c'est Sarah". This was followed by a smile, nods, and "C'est un bon nom. Sarah était la femme d'Ibrahim, non?" ("That's a good name. Sarah was Abraham's wife, no?")

He sat us down on a bench and pulled some sheets of paper off a rack -- almost like huge magazine pages. They were covered with pictures of models wearing dresses in designs he could do. The first page was all knee-length dresses -- I wanted a long dress (I tried to say I wanted the skirt to be long, meaning the skirt of the dress. When I used the word "la jupe", both Martha and the tailor exclaimed, "Une jupe!" as though I meant a skirt as opposed to a dress. I then said something about "la jupe de la robe", the skirt of the dress, which Martha corrected to "une robe longue". Welcome to learning by immersion.). The next page had long dresses, but all the necklines were too low. The tailor asked if I wanted long sleeves, so I said and motioned that I wanted sleeves, but approaching the elbows. I gave particular attention to three or four patterns and refused to allow myself to be rushed or settle for less than I really wanted. He also explained that he could adjust a given pattern. Once we had gone through all the dress patterns, I settled on one with an ankle-length skirt, a square neck which he adjusted to a crew neck (he drew on the picture with a pen to show what he would do) and three-quarter length sleeves which we shortened to elbow sleeves. He then took my measurements, asking each time if it was good and consciously not making them too tight (tighter clothes are the fashion in Gabon, so Martha had told him at the beginning to make sure the dress wouldn't be too tight). He wrote my name and measurements in a notebook (in Arabic) and said the dress would be ready within the week.

We went back the next Sunday to pick it up. When I came out from behind the curtain with it on, the smile on Martha's face said more than any Gabonese French or broken English could. It was perfect, and fitted exactly how I wanted (the zipper could have gone down longer, but I wanted it to be perfect and to have it too badly to leave it with him to change anything). And the colors! Pink and blue in the fabric, yellow lining and an orange zipper. It is perhaps the best-made dress I own to this day. Someone told me my face is glowing in this picture, but I attribute that to sweat and yellow lighting. Maybe. 

Intervening Sillines

My journal is quite honestly pretty badly written, and I can't always tell what happened when. It's not hugely important in the end, though, and all of the following stories occured in the last three weeks of April. 

The day we initially went to the tailor, Canon Fragelli had gone to buy flour for the bakery (50 kg -- they went through a lot!) as well as some produce. Martha and I found him at a shop, getting apples, oranges and sweet potatoes. A man came in, whom Canon Fragelli greeted jovially, and who then bought us a bottle of peanuts (they sell roasted peanuts in old bottles there). Canon thanked him warmly and said, "Joyeuse Pâques!" When we got back in the car, he exclaimed to us, "I just said 'Happy Easter' to a Muslim!"

I would have liked to try the wine that had been in here!

Made by Claretian nuns, no less. 

That same Sunday evening, something was going on with one of the school buses. To this day, I have no idea what happened; all I know is that between aperitif and dinner, all the men went to work on whatever it was while I, Martha, Angelique and Faith set the table and got dinner ready. Everything was done on our end, but the men were still doing whatever, condemning the four of us to wait. We ended up sitting in the arm chairs of the terrace, watching what was going on (I couldn't see anything due to the headlights shining directly in my eyes) and calling it "The Theater". We finally got to dinner, but there was more to be done with the buses. We had told Canon Sigros how we had been "watching" the "play" (or something to that effect), which meant, at the end of dinner, when Canon Fragelli asked, "Well, monsieur le chanoine, are you ready for 'Chapter Two'?" the response was, "No, Act Two!". 

The Bus Ride

If you don't have a car, take a bus. That was the Mission solution, anyway. 

Two weeks after Easter, we were eating lunch after Mass and Canon Fragelli asked, as was his custom, who was going out that afternoon. Sundays were frequent days for visiting, getting a haircut or watching/playing soccer, but you had to tell Canon where and when you were going. Anyway, he mentioned to me that we would pick up my dress that afternoon. Martha then reminded him that we didn't have a car: Canon Sigros had gone to Libreville for a few days in the Rav4, and Jimmy had taken the pick-up somewhere after Mass. Canon's face was quite amusing when he heard this, but he then recalled something. 

After counting up how many of us were going out, it was determined that we would all go to town in one of the 5 school buses. I think Canon wanted to take the new bus Jimmy had just brought back from Libreville, but it seemed they couldn't find the keys -- or something. As my journal says, "I don't really know what goes on a lot". In any case, the ten of us loaded into a bus and Canon Fragelli drove us down the bumpy, dusty road to Mouila. (As a side note, I seriously doubt that he has a CDL, but I also doubt that anyone in Gabn would care.) It felt like something you would see in a movie about African missionaries, except it was real. 

I promise to get part 2 out soon, but this post is long enough!