[Image]It is the Saturday before they declare the president-elect.I am at the hair salon doing the normal things we do on Saturdays because I am desperate for urban life to return to normal.Like everyone else, the days past have been escaping me, like a stringed lone balloon floating off into the skies. I need something to ground me, thus the salon.RELATEDHow to look great in short hair cutsSaturday_Magazine Feb 05, 2016[Image]A love-hate affair:7 lessons from the Hairy ChroniclesStyle Jun 16, 2016[Image]My salon is a modest one off Ngong Road. It is a shack neighboured by other shacks.It is not the kind where they serve champagne or hot chocolate. They don’t have a social media presence.Hawkers selling jikos and bananas, suitcases even, prowl the narrow paths between the shacks announcing their wares. It all reeks of the blue-collar hustle.I come here because my hairdresser speaks the language of my hair. She has just finished unbraiding my hair when I look into the mirror and feel something within me shift.Read: How about a little cut and trim?Suddenly I am fed up with it all, this business of caring for my growing hair: the careful braiding and unbraiding, the trimming and treating, moisturising and shampooing and conditioning and massaging and sleeping with a satin bonnet… argh.I catch my hairdresser's eyes in the mirror and tell her flatly, ‘I don’t want this hair anymore, let’s cut it.’I am blessed with hair from my father’s side of the family. It is thin soft hair that scantily grows to a point where it stops growing altogether, it is like our economy. And then we bald early.That’s right, I am already balding – I am a 37-year-old urban girl with a bald spot at the top of my head. And I am awfully proud of it.Many a hair expert has stood over that spot and promised to speak my hair back into existence. As though they are God. I usually chuckle under my breath.You cannot fight genetics, my bald spot was decided for me long before I was even born. I just didn’t think it would show up in my 30s.My hairdresser is appalled. She is gibbering in a way that suggests she has done – or said – something to push me over the edge.Read: Love letter from our hair to the Kenyan manShe is trying to talk me out of it, suggesting other styling options. But I am not indecisive about such things. Besides, I am not chopping off a finger or a toe, I am chopping off my hair – it will grow back.ThrillLater, at the barbershop, I am oddly thrilled when the hair clipper starts buzzing. It is like a gritty soundtrack.Chunks of hair fall off my head and down my shoulders to the floor. In a few minutes, I am laughing at the shape of my shaved head.It is shaped like a pawpaw. I don’t think I look as sexy as I think I look – I don’t look like Nandi Madiba, he-he, I look like my cousin Kiprotich.No stressing though, I am not Samson of the Bible, I don’t draw my strength from my hair. I don’t stand in front of a TV camera to read you the evening news or get on a stage to regale a crowd.I am a creative writer who sits behind a laptop and bangs stories away. I quietly draw strength from my mind and the colour of my personality, I can live without my hair.Read: Are women not their hair?I hear someone asking, ‘What has it been like, Bett, living like a handsome girl? Tell us!’ Ha-ha. It has been liberating.There are not enough love songs that can describe the feeling of the sun and wind softening the contours of your head.SeasonsNothing as liberating as standing under the shower and scrubbing yourself from head to toe.The seasons have now changed and we are back to endlessly blue skies. That head-to-toe scrub after a long workday is my redemption.I can also swim properly. Goodness, I had missed that. I no longer have to swim like a dog, with my braided head above the water, now I can swim like a dolphin.I am a really good swimmer, by the way. Our son turns two soon – I regretfully have not been going into the pool with him because I didn’t want to ruin my braided hair.The best part of it all is I am saving a lot of time and money. A lot! It would take me three hours and Sh3,000 to braid my hair.Five weeks later, I would be back at the salon, it would take one hour and Sh400 to unbraid it.It took me 20 minutes and Sh600 to shave off my hair. And that was even an overcharge.Anyway, I am now free to do other exciting things with my life. Like, meet up with you for a drink. Are you available? Just promise not to laugh when you sit across the table from me. BY DAILY NATION
posted by Breaking Kenya news at 15:52 on 8 Oct 2022
"A visit to the barbershop and the liberating feeling of cutting off my hair"
No comments yet. -