Tailor-Made

In Dodoma, we are far removed from the convenience of High Street clothes shops, where one can buy ready-made clothes to fit all sizes. There's no Dodoma equivalent of "Marks and Spencer's" or "Next". Nor do we have the option of clothing catalogues or internet to order clothes, with the luxury of home delivery.

However, Dodoma does have row upon row of small, wooden shops where we can pick out and purchase materials of many colours and textures:

And Dodoma does have Philippa:

Philippa is one of the many talented tailors who sit at the side of Dodoma's streets, busy creating clothes to order, with their sewing machines buzzing away and their measuring tapes constantly to hand.
 Each day, the tailors, both men and women, set up their machines and their clothes-racks in assigned places around the centre of town. Andrew's sister Claire discovered Philippa over a year ago. Philippa does such fantastic sewing that she is the one we go to whenever we need a new item of clothing. (Thanks,Claire, for the above photo!). She created a great African-style outfit for my Mum on her visit in March. Over the past year, I have been taking material to her whenever we need new clothes for Family Parker.
A few weeks ago, I found a beautiful blue "kanga" material in town, so after some thought and consulting with creative friends at MAF, I came up with an idea of what I would like to have created from this material. It is sometimes to difficult to know what kind of clothes I would like to have made, since I have never needed to think up designs before Tanzania! It still feels like a novelty to be able to choose material and I appreciate advice on what to have made from friends who are far more gifted than I in creative clothing design!
I decided to go along with a popular Tanzanian theme of having a matching outfit made for mother and daughter. Next, I paid a visit to Philippa- and a week later, picked up the matching items. They may not be very "M+S" or "Next", but these clothes are cool to wear in the hot African weather. Last Sunday, Esther and I enjoyed being "twins" for the day in our matching outfits!