I tuck my dress into my underwear.
Its that time of year.
The time of year when my face is perpetually shiny and light-colored clothes turn yellow in high sweat spots. The time of year when my hair never seems to dry (in about a month, the air will be so dry my skin will crack and bleed. Please don’t say: yes, but it’s a dry heat. People who live here don’t say things like that. Its 122 degrees of dry heat). The time of year that candles melt without being lit and tires explode and gum turns into liquid in the bottom of my purse. The time of year when sweat drips down my cheeks and back and butt simply from standing in front of the wardrobe and choosing the least hot bottoms, the least yellowed-armpit shirt. The time of year when sometimes I feel like crying but stop myself because its too hot.
This is the time of year when I tuck my dress into my underwear.
not tucked in – meh
Because, at home, I wear a shiid. A cotton Somali housedress, mumu-style and brilliantly colorful. Shiids are billowy and loose and thin. I’m supposed to wear a golgorad underneath, a floor-length polyester slip, but that defeats the purpose because, well, its polyester. Hot. Sticky. If I leave the house in my shiid, I’ll pull on a golgorad. Shiids are fantabulous because they double as hand towels for drying, rags for wiping tables, aprons, and in Somalia at least, they doubled as Kleenex. Wrap finger in shiid, insert into nostril, dig around. Or, farmer blow onto the floor and wipe leftovers with shiid. Who me? No, never.
Shiids are so billowy and loose that I could fit two or three of me inside one and they drag on the floor and trip me up, get caught on toy cars or thorns. But they aren’t meant to be worn frumpy and straight, they are meant to be tucked up under the waistband of the golgorad.
But wait, I’m at home. I’m not wearing a golgorad. Ah, but I do have a waistband. Voila, I tuck my dress into the waistband of my underwear.
tucked in – much better, right?
Somali-style hips in place, I can now practice my sway. Now my house helper says I look beautiful (it helps that by sheer luck, I purchased a quite fashionable material for my new shiids, usually I’m a few years behind Djiboutian fashion trends). Now I have easy access to material for wiping my shiny face or butt sweat. Now, I have a dress tucked into my underpants.
What time of year is it where you live?
laughing…
Love it 🙂 Here in Beijing it is the time of year where we all say “where the heck did Spring go?” While there are technically four seasons here, Spring and Autumn tend to last all of about 2 weeks. I usually round up to a month, but once it hits 33/90 and all the blossoms have given way to greenery it’s not *really* Spring.
We say that we have hot and hotter. Or dusty and dustier. Not so much of four seasons, not like Minnesota where I’m from!
Love. I would like to wear a shiid. Where I live we are also in the middle of hot season. Only this year it’s strange. The rains came early and no one knows what to make of it. In April we had May weather. Now that it’s May, we don’t know what to do. It’s rained a few times, but not every day like it will in June. We’re up well over a hundred every day. sigh… Candles in glass jars only. Frequent power cuts. At least the dust is gone. 🙂
We actually had rain too, and for a long time. Not so much in the city, but in the desert. When we see little sprigs and thorn bushes, we all exclaim about how green things are.
Looks pretty comfy to me!
It’s the time of year here when people start saying, “oh dang, it’s so hot,” when it’s 90 outside. And I want to punch them in the face. (Still working on that extending grace to others thing) 🙂
Ha! That made me laugh, picturing you punching someone in the face. I suppose it shouldn’t make me laugh. But…
This made me chuckle so much! I’d love to wear a mumu in the Bologna heat & humidity. It’s nothing like you’re going through though. It’s times like that when I consider buying only yellow clothes! Thanks for making me smile! Sarita x
Good idea – all yellow. I like yellow, Djiboutians like color. I’ll have to find the sweat-shade of yellow though! I do love the shiid for these days.
we are in the same boat as Hope over here in Cameroon. the “little rainy season” came early and we didn’t get nearly as much rain as usual. now we’re in this weird in-between stage where sometimes it is blazing hot and sometimes we get two thunderstorms in one day. things should settle down as we get closer to July.
Shiids look and sound a lot like Cameroonian cabas, right down to their many uses: handkerchief, wiper-of-runny-noses, napkin for my hands, etc., etc. we do wear ours “frumpy and straight,” though!
Ah, glad we aren’t the only country to use our clothes to wipe our faces!
It’s finally getting to be summer in Minnesota. I’m kind of looking forward to the heat, and I’m glad it’s not your 122 degree heat!
You guys have earned summer this year, that’s for sure.
It’s the hot season here in Thailand – last weekend, my husband said, “If you need me, I’ll be curled up in the fridge.” Yep, that about sums it up!
Hahaha, I am wearing mine while I am reading this! Except I am back in Canada now so it’s not as cool as it was in Kenya.
Love that you are wearing it in Canada.
Yep… much the same in Bangui, Central Africa. I used tuck dresses into my knicker elastic too 🙂 After almost 11 months living back in England, I could do with a bit of that heat, but not the candle-melting, skin splitting sort, or the ‘why does my bed feel as if there’s an electric blanket in it?’ at siesta time, either, preferably!!
Rachel,
I love you. Thanks for taking on the light and heavy and being awesome and honest through it all. This and “The Life Overseas” blog are lifelines.
Thanks,
Amy
Amy this comment made my day, you are so sweet. Thank you.
Like Kuwait, but I have to wear real clothes and carry a sweater or wrap so I can survive the ferocious a/c. Not sure which I would prefer at 122° – your au natural shiid with underwear hips or my a/c undershirt, long sleeves, and cardigan. You certainly look cooler.
Hard to imagine carrying a sweater in this heat, but we visited Dubai once and its true – so cold inside!
It should be spring here, but it’s not. We’ve had a mix of freezing rain and snow today…snow forecasted for the weekend. Gotta love Alaska! 🙂
I have to ask, which is what people ask me about the heat, do you like snow?
Yes, I DO love the snow…when it’s winter and it’s cold and the snow “stays” and it’s pretty and you can have lots of fun in it…snowshoeing, skiing, build snowmen, etc. But when it’s the middle of May, and it’s supposed to be spring, and it’s only borderline freezing, so the snow quickly turns to slush…NO, I don’t like it. I should be getting ready to plant my garden…but that’s probably still several weeks off with this year’s weather. All that being said, I would still much rather be here than where you are. I DO NOT like hot weather. I was miserable when we were in MN, WI, and IL last summer and it was in the 90’s! 🙂
This post reminded me of when I was a little girl in Swaziland and I would tuck the hem of my dress up into the elastic of my undergarment around my legs to get my dress out the way so I could climb trees, or do whatever else that was easier to do without fabric flying everywhere. It still left enough leg covered, but got the “extra” out of the way.
As far as the weather where I’m at… It’s finally hit the 80s. We’ve had a lot of rain, so the last few days of sunshine have been great for catching up on piles of laundry. My husband (whose from MN) tells me I have about a five degree threshold of comfort. I think I was made to live in Southern California or Hawaii. 🙂
And here I’ve been telling my children not to wipe their hands on their dresses. I’m also a hypocrite: I’ve taken to wearing my apron around so can do just that.
It just turned cold here in Buenos Aires: the air is damp, but there shouldn’t be snow. And in a month, we’ll go back to June gloom in San Diego. The ocean produces a ton of fog as the weather gets warmer, and June is actually not the nicest month there. I mean, compared to other San Diego days.
Nice – wearing an apron just to wipe your hands on it! I like that.
Thirty years after Indonesia, I still wear my version of your shiid in the house. It’s like a bit like a thob in the Middle East, and I’ve collected and wear some of those too. Americans have no idea what comfort they are missing!
Nothing beats a shiid while pregnant either. American maternity clothes have nothing on a waistband-less mumu.
Love this. Absolutely love it! Love that you do not take yourself too seriously to post this. That says such cool things about you, a person I have never met, but still feel like I know from reading so much of what you write.
Here in West-Africa, it is the time of year when you can turn off the fan one night because of the cool breeze that came with the sudden rain. But the next afternoon you wonder if you have the calendar wrong and it’s actually high hot season April because there is no respite from the heat.
We don’t wear shiids here, but we do have another house dress called spera. It’s made from a cotton (sometimes calico) fabric that is tie-died with a bull’s eye right at the point where, well… you really wouldn’t want a bull’s eye. Front and back, no less. After one of my American friends made that observation to me, I had a hard time wearing them again….
At home, I stick to my very modest below-the knees running bermudas (never used to run, as I*m not a runner, but the material is highly breathable, hence my love for them) and a cotton tunic that modestly covers any shapes my body has. Whenever there is company around, I tie on a wrap-around skirt on top of the bermudas and I’m ready to go out in public.
Oh! I laughed out loud about the bulls eye. Too funny. Sounds like you’ve got a pretty good system worked out, I love hearing how people make do with the weather and the local customs, fun stuff.
YoU look great with the dress !
Thanks Amin
Rainy season has just ended and so dry season is on its way. Many of our Ethiopians female employees tuck their dresses/skirts into their underwear. It is not that hot here and I have not picked up the habit yet.
When I married into a Pakistani family I fell in love with shalwar qamiz, the tunic and baggy trousers worn by the south Asian women who don’t wear a sari. I’d never been a girly girl by any stretch of the imagination but shalwar qamiz made me feel deliciously feminine. I have about twenty of them and used to wear them regularly in the UK. After a while I grew impervious to the looks and actually had many people stop me to compliment me – both asian and caucasian.
Dressing differently is all part of fully exploring what it’s like to live in another culture – you look great, and great post by the way 🙂
I’ve always thought the shalwar qamiz was beautiful too, and looks so comfortable. I had a friend who lived in Pakistan bring me a fancy one and I would wear it sometimes to weddings here. Thanks Aisha, great to hear from you.
It’s finally cooling down here, and the status of constant sweating has tapered off. It was HOT all summer. Like over 100 degrees hot, up above 110 degrees very often. BUT, it’s going to be cold now. I hope. The heat was so brutal, and the houses here (mostly) do not have AC. So I take a shower at bedtime, go to bed wet with a fan on me, and hope I fall asleep before I dry. 🙂 Glad to be snuggling under covers, finally.
[…] you could say that Djibouti has two seasons: Dry. Like a hair dryer blowing on your face and cracking your lips. And wet. Like a sock soaked in […]
Your stories and those that comment on them make me want to have a adventure in exploring other cultures outside of the US myself! So awesome. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very blessed to have the life that I do but I would love to get out and explore and experience all of these things!!
[…] not the only one either. If you curious about these local dresses, check out this Djibouti Jones blog post. She does a better job writing about them AND she models them for some pictures. I learned the […]