Hair

So, I realize I haven't posted in forever. Here come another slew of outdated posts :)

So, let me tell you about one of the most physically painful experiences I’ve ever had.

So, for the past few months, Katy and I have been admiring Rwandan women’s hair, and after months of considering getting our hair braided, we made the foolish decision to do so. Ok, so it wasn’t entirely foolish. I do like how it looks, but god was it painful to get done! We walked through Nyamirambo looking for a salon (or saloon, as they’re called here), and we didn’t have to walk all that far because right at the top of our road, there are several. One that we walked past beckoned us over, and even though they didn’t speak much (if any) English, we still were able to communicate that we wanted twisty braids with sparkles in them :) So after we worked out a price and bought the extensions for our hair (4 packets for me and 3 for Katy, mind you), we sat down on some cushions, and the ladies got to work. We started off with two ladies each working on our hair—Mama Zainabu started working on my little wispy baby hairs on the back of my neck, and another lady started working on the baby hairs around my temples. Moral of the first five minutes—baby hairs are not meant to be braided. Just imagine someone yanking on 5-10 of them at a time for maybe a minute each and then moving to the next set. So that was painful. Then they moved to the hair around my temples and the hair on the back of my head, which, as we discovered, were more painful than the baby hairs. Really, there wasn’t a spot on my head that wasn’t more than fairly painful. We ended up sitting there hunched over for nine hours total with one break-ish that lasted maybe 5 minutes. Probably not even. They had Katy and me facing each other for a while so we could talk, but after a few hours they turned us, so I basically spent the rest of my time burying my head and gritting my teeth into my knees. I got to sit in a chair for a little while, and that was probably the best part of my day. It was also right about then that Ben got off work to bring us the heavenly snacks of chapatti, pringles, cookies, and banana beer. God, did we need the banana beer. Why we didn’t drink heavily before doing this is completely beyond me. Alcohol is clearly the best pain reliever in a situation such as this. It’s a great boredom reliever as well. We had brought our computers thinking we could put a dent in our papers…how foolish of us. We’d also brought books like any good muzungus…also not an option. Basically, the only thing you can really do is sit there and deal with the pain. Sounds fun, right? That’s why we definitely agreed that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. ONCE in a lifetime. Never again. There were also plenty of “now I know what it feels like to be scalped by the Indians” jokes, and a fair amount of appreciation for the fact that the ladies doing our hair could not understand what we were saying or the words we were using. At times, I really felt like they were just making this extra painful just to spite us or get revenge at muzungus. I was pretty convinced of that. Anyway, after this was all over, they trimmed the flyaways from our braids and then doused our heads with boiling water to set our braids. They used artificial hair, so maybe it melted the plastic into place? I’m really not sure. All I know was that I was so thankful to be done!!! So now my hair goes at least halfway down my back, covers my chest, and is heavier than it’s ever been. It also contains 450 braids, which, in my opinion, is completely unnecessary. But it’s pretty and makes me feel like the rastas who hang out at Juicy (a café/hookah bar). And it has little sparkles in the front, so I guess it’s alright. I’ve had two braids fall our so far, and on both occasions, I’ve cherished the fact that I’ve still found my real hair in its place. It’s so soft, and it still exists :) I feel like I finally understand the Rwandan obsession with muzungu hair. Also, I’m really not sure how to wash it. Rwandans/Black people in general just don’t really need to, from what I understand. They just put oil in it. My scalp obviously makes enough oil on its own, and so it’s gotten rather itchy. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually :)