Laffays, a handbag essential?

 

I wonder what you normally put in your handbag. Tissues, a pen, money, a mobile …a headscarf or a laffay… I don’t think what my Mum takes to church is high up on your priority list! As well as the usual mobile, pen etc. my mum’s handbag contains a fan, a water bottle, insect repellent wipes, a bible, a song book and a laffay.

Mum's handbag

You may be unsure about why some of these things are doing in a handbag or even asking yourself what they are. Some of these are more normal in Chad than others for example the water and the fan are a permanent feature wherever we go as at times Chad is not so cool as it seems… The song book and bible are essential for church as we all read the reading for the day in unison and sing lots of songs from “chants de victoire” a French hymn book. In case of an emergency, she also has insect repellent wipes so we don’t get bitten to death!

A typical patient at the hospital wearing a laffay

However, the day we took this picture was special. Mum and Dad were going to a one of the hospital guards, Hassana’s house after church, for his marriage celebration. Before going there after church mum put her laffay (which was in her handbag) on. A laffay is basically a big piece of thin material which you wrap around yourself on top of normal clothes. It is sort of like an Indian sari. Some of you may have seen me wear one when we visited churches last summer. You may have guessed it is a typical Muslim outfit. As Hassana is Muslim it was appropriate to wear one, as all the women in the area wear one all the time. They had a good time sharing a meal and so did we a week later when we went to the house next door for Dago’s baptism that Rebecca mentioned in our last blog!

 

Typical Chadian "fete" food

Talking about traditional dress has made me remember that we have just managed to get some photos of the traditional day we had at school. It was all part of the celebration of the last day of school before the holidays by some students in my class.


Rebecca's class : 1re S

 Having not been allowed to have a football match with acts in between, as we had just before Christmas where we both played our instruments, they quickly organised a day where everyone came in traditional dress and had a photo taken of the whole school at break time. Thankfully they specified that we had to come in traditional African dress, which means in material with African print or laffays (girls) and jalabias and scarfs (boys) as you can see in the picture of Rebecca’s class. However the sports teacher said the material is not traditional enough as they used to wear grass skirts before that! Imagine… If they hadn’t specified we might have had to go in Victorian dresses as we are English! We don’t own that sort of dress funnily enough! 


The same week our school organized a school visit to a Refugee camp on the outskirts of N’djamena. I was one of the four students from Terminale (the highest year) chosen to go with 2 teachers. All the women we saw were wearing laffays!  

The refugee camp at Gaoui, N'djamena

We went to visit the school that has just opened at the camp. 

A classroom at the school

It goes from Nursery to about the equivalent of year 11. There are about 700 students even though some of the children from the camp have gone to private schools as the school started late. We want to create a link between our two schools in order to help them with school materials. They don’t have many books and sit on mats as they have no tables and chairs. The refugees are mostly Chadians who have come back to Chad from the Central African Republic following the problems which started in 2012.

I have already made a little video and a PowerPoint in order to tell our school about their needs and how to help.



Reception class

As well as a school the camp has its own clinic and hundreds of tents each one with about 30 people living in it. We will now have to work out how to raise money ourselves as a school and all this in not much time. Apparently the other day the camp received lots of cows as a gift… I suppose that sounds funny. When my friend and I told the philosophy teacher (the one who organized the trip) he looked very surprised! I wonder whether they just killed them (yes they were probably alive!) or kept some of them to sell or milk.



I was meant to finish the video and presentation with some friends when we came back from the holidays, unfortunately there have been some problems. Despite going back to school as planned on the 9^th of March after the holidays we haven’t been to school since. There were some quite violent student protests in town about a new law which enforces the use of motor cycle helmets. All schools and universities in N’djamena have been closed since then though things are looking better as we go back tomorrow!

Please comment and tell us what you put in your handbag!

A Chadian artist's impression of women in laffays