I got my hur did. For those of your not up to date on your Ebonics that means I got my hair done. For weeks I have been thinking about getting my hair braided with long braids. This means I would have to get fake hair and find someone to do it. My host moms are the go to ladies for “sick ass braids” in my village but I have seen many ladies start this process with my host moms and it end up being a 3 or 4 day process. I wanted it done in one big painful session instead of several. I decided to go to a “salon” in Basse. A salon here in Basse consists of a room with a mirror and some chairs. They only actually use this room if its raining or they are eating lunch. Most of the time people sit on a mat on the stoop of the building. The only difference between a salon in Basse and just going to a friend’s house to do it is the price and paintings that say “Barbing” “Saloon” and some pictures of hair styles they can try to imitate.
After Ramadan was over I had another volunteer take me over to a lady that volunteers have used in the past. Of course, that lady was off somewhere without any planned return so I was left in the hands of another lady that said she could do it. One problem with all this is that she doesn’t speak any English or Mandinka and I don’t speak any Fula. All I really had to say was “rasta” which is a general term for long braids but any questions they asked me after that was met with us stairing questioningly at each other. Eventually the woman would just assume an answer for whatever she asked me and the braids started.
The braids don’t hurt when you first start to get them. Actually, most of this whole process is painless which is why the 3 days of scalp pain I had after, though warned about it, still came as a surprise. The braiding takes forever. I started at 10:30 in the morning at it wasn’t finished till 4pm. To make the braids the braider sections out little piece of hair then tightly wraps the fake hair around the base and then braids the real and fake hair together into a long braid. At first your scalp doesn’t really hurt but by the evening, when you’re ready to go to bed, it hurts terribly. Finding a position that you can rest your head without pulling hair is difficult. This ended up lasting a couple nights until I finally found good ways to sleep and my scalp got used to it.
When the braiding was half way done my “stylist” looks at me and said “the hair is finished”. I had brought two packs of fake hair with me and instead of spacing it out she used it all in the back. We had to send out a girl to go get 2 more packs of fake hair. It was SO much fake hair. Most people do 2 packs and I ended up running around during rainy season (hot and humid) with 4 packs of fake hair on my head. It was heavy, and huge. After the braids were done I thought I could leave, but I was wrong. A minute later the woman comes over, lights a cloth on fire and starts to run it over my braids (perfect!). Were the braids done then? No. She then brings out scalding hot water and dips half the hair in just inches from my face. Was she done then? Yes. Finally.
Walking through Basse after that was interesting since I was getting A LOT of looks from my huge weave. I even got a free coke from a guy, they were THAT good looking.
This is my back yard as Matt and I were trying to reconstruct my privacy fence. Before we did some work to it I'm pretty sure possibly a lot of thigh was visible from my compounds side yard.
Finished!
This is my host Grandma, Mama Ami. She is great and desperately tried to keep me out of the rice fields so I wouldn't get a leech after me.
This is a class in the nursery school that I do work in.
Green leaf food bowl.
Last but not least. I had a parasite worm in my toe. This is a picture of it. It's hard to see but its the white line that leads up to a sort of people at the top of the circle. There will be more on this to come.
