Waiting on the wedding dress

David's been gone for a week and will be gone another six days. Halfway there! Today is the day of his written exam. If he passes this part, he'll take the clinical exam on Monday or Tuesday and should be home Wednesday or Thursday. I can't wait!!

Dusty (my parents' dog) caught a guffia last night, a large bush rat. What a lovely sight to wake up to in the front yard! The guffia's body was about a foot long, and its tail dragged another foot behind it. Delightful.

David's sister Bridget is getting married in May, and we can't go, since it's two days before we're supposed to leave for the States (we just found out the date last week). I felt bad that we couldn't attend, so I thought I'd offer my wedding dress for her to borrow. After some discussion between David and Bridget's fiance, David texted me from Ibadan to let me know Bridget wants to use the dress.

So the big question then was, How do I get it cleaned?

My first step was to ask on Joslink--our email announcement/query network for missionaries and expatriates in Jos--if anyone could recommend a reliable dry-cleaner. I got two replies, but both referred me to someone else, without giving me the contact information. Great. So then I thought I could ask the young Nigerian ladies who work in the SIM office in town. Bingo!

One of the girls who used to work in the office , Talitha, had helped me with my wedding, and she got married last June, so she knew of a place. Talitha gave the name and phone number to Kauna, who also works in the office, and I say Kauna yesterday to get the info. This morning my parents' driver took me out 20 minutes to Rayfield to find the place. The cleaner, however, wasn't at home. What to do?

My parents' driver saw an older man going through the gate and hailed him. After some discussion in Hausa, it turned out that the cleaner had told the older man, baba, that a woman would be coming by with a wedding dress to clean. That being the case, we left the dress with the baba and came home.

Oh, to have a book of yellow pages and flip through to find a good cleaner! Let's just hope that for the $12 I'm paying, my dress doesn't get ruined! I guess I'll find out on Monday...