In the course of getting to know my new town I’ve been trying to find a good seamstress… I’ve taken a liking to one as she speaks pretty good English and has been helping me with my Ewe… so I took a dress I had made in hopes that she could turn it into a skirt. She took my measurements; I handed over the dress and was on my way. A few days later I went by to see if it was finished and she pulls me aside and then begins to tell me that 18” (falling just above my knees) is WAY to short so she opted to make my skirt 20” in length…

Its true, in all the reading I did before I left for Ghana I found that legs (more or less to the knee) is to be covered, where as the breasts hang out like yard sale items, waving in the wind but better keep the legs hidden… top secret.

I still don’t understand the dress code in Ghana… Sometimes women are wearing very typical Ghanaian clothing; a frilly shirt of some African print, with puffed sleeves, a zipper up the back and a full length skirt of matching material with another two yards of the same cloth wrapped around the waist (I don’t know how they aren’t dying of heat exhaustion). Other times they are dressing western, wearing jeans and tank tops. “But the men, now that is a course of a different color. They dress up in every different way in the world: some have long shirts made from the same African cloth that is attired by the women. Or they’ll wear a bolt of it draped over one shoulder in the style of Hercules. Other wear American-style buttoned shirts and shorts in drab, stained colors. A few of the smaller men even go gallivanting around in little undershirts decorated with childish prints, and nobody seems to notice the joke.” (Poisonwood Bible, Barbra Kingsolver) Children run around in anything… or nothing at all. They typically dress is the rag bags of church charities, not giving a care to if the item is ripped, is covered in lace or is way to small or big.

Kids don’t care if their clothing is ripped exposing their butt or their chest. They don’t try to hide anything… peeing and bathing in front of everyone, and my favorite is when they try to have a conversation with all the while... (I just laugh and walk away) Most of the time kids are running around in baggy underpants giving no care to the world.