Hair

Recently, Esther asked me to bring back a specific hair product from Uganda.

Esther said, "Look, I'm wearing my hair like
a khawaja today!" OK, yes, I do wear my
hair like that nearly every day, point taken.

We had this conversation in the rain while saying goodbye before I hopped in the car to drive to Maridi to catch a plane to Entebbe:

Esther: “When you go to Uganda, please bring me back something for my hair.”

Me: “Something? What do you mean?”

Esther: “You know, the treatment that you put in your hair, leave for some time, then wash out and your hair is soft.”

Me: “No, I have no idea what that means and I don’t think you’re actually talking about ‘conditioner’ because I can only find ‘conditioner’ at special khawaja shops, imported at excessive prices for stupid white foreign women who can afford it and know that their hair will fall out and/or poof into frizz if they don’t use it.” (That is a paraphrased merging of what I said and what I thought. Poetic license.)

Esther: “Treatment-you put it on your hair to make it soft.”

Me: “But what is it called? What is the brand name?”

Esther: “It’s called ‘treatment,’ and any brand name is OK.”

Me: “Um…OK, I’ll try…”

Esther braiding Vaida's hair
at the Kayanga house

And because I love Esther and I know that Mundri isn’t exactly a happening place for all your beauty-product needs, I spent a significant amount of my time in Uganda trying to figure out what she meant. And because I am a white girl, it wasn’t self-explanatory. True, I am fascinated by braids, and twisty hairstyles, and weaving black yarn into short hair to make lots of long braids that can then be braided again into one thick and amazing braid, and also I wish I could be a part of the community that is shared between women doing each other’s hair, but I have no understanding of the products that my friends here put in their hair. I’m pretty sure they have no understanding of mine either—after a long motorcycle ride with Repent that started out sunny and ended in a torrential downpour, I came home and sat down with my detangling hair spray stuff and slowly and painfully combed knots out of my hair for an hour, while people looked on with curiosity and amusement. That is not something my friends here usually have to deal with.

So fast-forward to Uganda, I asked all the women working at the hotel what I should get. Our conversations inevitably went something like this:

Me: “So my friend in South Sudan asked me to get some stuff for her hair called ‘treatment’ that is supposed to make her hair soft. Where could I get something that that and what actually is it?”

Helpful Lady (H. L.): “OK. So is your friend’s hair hard or soft? Is it relaxed? Is it natural? Does she want it to be relaxed or natural?”

Long pause. Long blank stare.

Me: “Um…her hair is in braids?”

H.L.: “You probably want to get her a relaxing chemical and then some cream that you put on after the chemicals.”

Me: “She didn’t say anything about chemicals. Is there anything that you put on and then wait for an hour and then wash out?”

H.L. “Yes, that is the relaxing treatment that you put on and then you wash it out. Then you put on the treatment after that.”

Me: “But I heard something like if you put on the wrong kind of chemical then your hair will fall out?”

H. L.: “Yes, but there is one main type of chemical that most people use. I think you will be OK.” She did not make me confident that it would be OK, but she then told me several places I could go to buy them.

Esther trying to braid my hair

Of course, when I actually went, I went with one of the guys from the hotel, and he was not helpful at all. I asked him if he ever did anything with his hair, and he said he just buys the cheap shampoo and is done with it because he is a man. I’m not a man, but I used to do that. But now I get kind of excited when I see all the varieties of shampoos and conditioners for white girl hair when I’m in the States, and now I spend more time than I care to admit staring at it all and then choosing the cheapest of all the things that I want and am sure will make my hair impossibly beautiful, and buying that one. It’s not as cheap than the cheapest thing available, but it is cheaper than most of the things, because I’m cheap and I like cheap things. But for Esther, I was prepared to be not cheap. So I dragged Graham all over the store until we found the aisle of hair products, of which maybe 4 things could possibly be used on my hair without dire consequences. While this doesn’t bother me because I am in Africa and I’m a visitor here, I can see how it might bother non-white-people in the US to go to the shampoo aisle there, because they ARE from the US and there are a lot more non-white people in the US than the shampoo aisle may lead a casual outside observer to suspect.

So Graham and I are in the hair product aisle, he is bored out of his mind but being very patient, and I am reading labels of everything and feeling overwhelmed. So I turn to the other ladies in the aisle who are confidently choosing what they want. I’m beyond shame at this point, so I launch into a long explanation with excessive details of what I’m looking for and why and who it’s for and where I live and why I need to get whatever it is that I’m looking for.

On a side note, I don’t know if this is a girl thing, but my sisters and I are prone to giving excessive information when asking people we don’t know for things. My brother-in-law makes fun of my sister for asking for a refill of water at a restaurant to be put into a to-go cup, “It’s just because we are on a long trip, and I want to make sure to have the water because my son might need it, but we forgot his sippy cup at home, because you know, his sister was crying about not wanting to leave without her sparkle purse, and then when we finally got on the road, we realized that we had forgotten the bag with the sippy cup, so that’s why I need this to-go cup with a straw, if you can help me out with that it would be so great!” Of course, she would only need to say, “Please give me a to-go cup” to get what she wanted, and no one would be annoyed with her neediness, it’s just customer service, but we are a detail family. But after watching Benji laugh at Joanna for this (he doesn’t believe in excessively verbalizing his thoughts unless he is teaching theology), I realized that I don’t need to share extra information with strangers who are probably trying to steal my identity, so I’ve started to share as little as possible, so as to remain mysterious. Once while on the phone with Expedia to try to change a flight (this happens to me a lot), I was trying to change the flight so that the outgoing flight to be after the in-coming flight, which was making it look like I was returning before I left. When the person on the other end of the phone finally understood what I was asking, she said, “Why would you want to do this?” Probably out of curiosity and not a desire to steal my identity, but I just said, “It’s a long story and you don’t need to know in order to change the ticket-just tell me if you can do it or not, please.” And it worked and they DID do it—for a small exorbitant fee.  But sometimes details are necessary, and when a white girl is buying hair stuff for an African lady, that is one of those times.

Still trying.

We went through another conversation about relaxed or hard or soft hair, and I decided that I was not going to buy any chemicals that might make anyone’s hair fall out, so we settled on some stuff that you put in the hair and wait for a few minutes and then wash it out and it’s soft. It seemed as close as possible to what Esther asked me for anyway.

When I gave it to Esther, she seemed grateful and she said that she used it, but then she said later, “Next time before you go to Uganda, I’ll take you to the salon in the market and show you the exact products that I need. Then you will be able to choose the right thing.” And that made me suspect that maybe I didn’t get the right thing, but Esther said that what I got was a good quality ‘something’ that she will use anyway.

We had this conversation outside while waiting for the bread to bake. My own hair was down and mostly dry from my shower. I was about to scrunch it up into a hair tie (my classy hairstyle of choice) while Esther and I were hanging out watching bread bake, but I know that Esther is a champion braider (everyone in the neighborhood gets her to braid their hair—but whatever, Esther is one of those people who is really good at EVERYTHING. Seriously—cooking, baking, gardening, braiding, everything. She’s amazing), so I said, “Want to braid my hair? Just make one braid because I only have one hair tie.”

She laughed about the hair tie and said she’d try. She grabbed my hair and started scooping it and pushing at it while it fell around everywhere.

Eventually she let go of all of it, and said, “I can’t do it. Your hair is too soft. It won’t work. You have hair like Jesus.”

At least some part of me is like Jesus.

Yunis braided this.

But I would like to finish off by saying that two days later I was hanging out with my friend Yunis. She likes to talk about the day that she is going to braid all of my hair up so that it will go into a ponytail of small braids behind my head. I am torn between wanting to see how it would look (OK, I know it will look bad because, like I said before, I have a really lumpy skull, but how bad? Is there a small possibility that it will make me look cool and African? OK, I know it won’t, but maybe…) and wondering how I will sleep if all of my hair is poking out of the back of my head. She said she will find the small hair ties that they sell for children in the market (Do I have hair like Jesus or like a tiny child?) and make me awesome. Or at least provide me with a way of more accurately applying sunscreen to my scalp.  To demonstrate, she grabbed a tiny section of my hair and braided the tightest, tiniest braid with a piece of my bangs, tying it in a knot at the end. I could have made a braid that tiny and tight maybe after an hour of cramping hands and tangled fingers, but the probability of me ever trying to do that to myself is quite small.  Of course, in seconds the knot had popped out and the braid had unraveled, “But next time, we’ll make bigger braids and tie them.” And I promise to provide photographic evidence, should that ever actually happen. And I’m sure I’ll look just like African Jesus.

But also, I've decided that I need to learn a marketable skill for next time I'm out of a job. I've decided to learn hair-braiding African-style. The ladies at the salon near my house said, "Come on over!" And Esther is already letting me practice. No, I can't use a curling iron, but I have been good at braiding since the friendship-bracelet era of second grade. And the good thing is that Esther is not tender-headed, unlike SOME people (Marian).

Yes, I'm wrapped in a blanket I stole from
Ethiopian Airlines because it was really cold that day.

The finished product. 

Our hair is identical.