More Shopping Tales From The Dark Continent
Blog: Don't give up the day job - 5 June 2009
By: Anne-Marie Weeden
A tale in the same vein as the one where I tried to return three rakes, and only got my money back for the ones that weren't broken...
A colleague of ours was telling me a story last week. She wanted to get some skirts made out of the loud, funky Congolese cotton prints that are so beautiful. She'd bought her fabric and found a local seamstress.
The seamstress gave her a quote which included a charge for making a lining for the skirts. Our colleague didn't want a lining - she just wanted a simple cotton one piece skirt run up. She agreed with the seamstress that she would sew her the skirts without a lining.
When she went to collect the skirts she was presented with a bill that was the same price as if she had included the lining. She queried it, reminding the seamstress that the skirts had been made without the lining, so there was no real justification for charging her for the extra material a lining would have used.
Ah but Madam the seamstress replied, You are thin, but some of my clients, they are fat. And they will use extra material for their skirts and linings, so I need to charge you extra to pay for that material.
This is a logical conclusion for most shopkeepers in Kampala. And yet it is a scenario where most muzungus come unstuck, ranting and railing at the ridiculousness of it all.
Don't get me wrong. I have my days when I rant and rail. But it rarely gets you anywhere. Sometimes you just have to accept that you will be paying for fat women's skirt linings, and you'll probably be happier for it.
A colleague of ours was telling me a story last week. She wanted to get some skirts made out of the loud, funky Congolese cotton prints that are so beautiful. She'd bought her fabric and found a local seamstress.
The seamstress gave her a quote which included a charge for making a lining for the skirts. Our colleague didn't want a lining - she just wanted a simple cotton one piece skirt run up. She agreed with the seamstress that she would sew her the skirts without a lining.
When she went to collect the skirts she was presented with a bill that was the same price as if she had included the lining. She queried it, reminding the seamstress that the skirts had been made without the lining, so there was no real justification for charging her for the extra material a lining would have used.
Ah but Madam the seamstress replied, You are thin, but some of my clients, they are fat. And they will use extra material for their skirts and linings, so I need to charge you extra to pay for that material.
This is a logical conclusion for most shopkeepers in Kampala. And yet it is a scenario where most muzungus come unstuck, ranting and railing at the ridiculousness of it all.
Don't get me wrong. I have my days when I rant and rail. But it rarely gets you anywhere. Sometimes you just have to accept that you will be paying for fat women's skirt linings, and you'll probably be happier for it.
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