Patchwork Elbow

Anyone who's been to my house recently will have been quizzed on the new patchwork cloth, and what to do with it.



I've given myself patchwork elbow sewing the little squares together after a long day's work at my desk next door, but it is at last finished and now I don't know what to do with it. Originally it was going to be a pair of trousers, for a boyfriend who, happily, showed his true colours before I got onto row 2, so now it has developed in to two metres of pinks, greens, blues and the odd piece of orange scattered throughout, and it's going to be for me.



I wanted to make it into a pair of trousers for myself, but then I moved onto the idea of a dress, then someone suggested I use it to make another bedspread, a chaise longue, cushions, a ball gown, a tunic, and now I am back to the trousers. But at this rate it's not going to be anything because it's still sitting on the back of a chair being shown to anyone who comes to visit, and Omar the tailor is still waiting for me to come down and give him instructions on what to do with it.

It's been a busy few weeks, and it's suddenly got very hot. I've been spending my saturdays at Now's new shop, where his niece cooks lunch and we drink Nescafe and I amuse his clients by getting up from the broken plastic chair I sit on outside the shop to sell them one cigarette or a teaspoon of pepper. I guess they've never seen a white person spoon washing powder (bought in bulk) into little plastic bags then tied in elaborate knots and hung on a metal wire to be displayed on the back wall before. I've also been working hard, having the annual contemplation of moving to another country, but mostly just trying to do my job well, make new friends and amuse myself with music and going to the tailor to find new scraps of fabric.

I recently wrote an article about an Ivorian singer called Dobet Gnahore, who gave probably the best performance I have seen in a year at the French Cultural Centre in Dakar. She's an absolute fireball of a woman, a singer, dancer, actor, drummer, who's intimidating in her talent on stage but just the nicest sweetest and most modest woman in person. She grew up in an artists' commune in Abidjan, where she learnt every art under the sun, and as I was researching this village, it reminded me of how when I came to Africa I was going to dance, that I said to myself, even if I never find any work, at least I will be able to do what I love most: to dance. Luckily I found a lot of work, but I never did much dancing. So, I am off to Abidjan today to stay with my friend and spend the week taking dance classes in Dobet Gnahore's village.

Next post from Cote d'Ivoire, then.