29. Christmas shopping and an attempt to have African clothes made

Dec. 26
Well I had hoped that on this day, there could be a wonderful blog about how we successfully had some beautiful African clothes made for us, which were opened on Christmas morning. In addition, the internet shopping and shopping in Kigali were all done and happily behind us on Christmas morning. Well.... reality was a little different. But we did still have a warm and beautiful Christmas celebration (see next post).

What I do not describe in the next post is how of the four pieces of clothing we had Josiane make for us, only 1 fit -- Ruth Ann's dress! Somehow, even though she took measurements and the men's shirts are quite simple, both Isaac's and John's were too narrow at the top (they could not get them over their heads) and John's was about 4 inches short at the waist. Naomi's dress was nothing like she had described, for example, she wanted it to be floor length and instead it came to about mid-calf.

Over the coming days, Ruth Ann took the clothes back to Josiane and she "fixed" the length of the shirt and tried to widen them, but couldn't really. We sent Isaac's shirt home with Noah and Isaac took John's shirt. Naomi's dress went back and forth to Josiane so many times I lost track of where it was and so did Naomi. It's disappeared! Maybe in our house? Or maybe it's still with Josiane. Re-work on these items was not something I wanted to spend my time on!

P.S. In March 2016, Ruth Ann learned that a colleague has had success with a different seamstress, named Josephine, who has a stall at Kimironko. Maybe we'll test that seamstress soon!