A Tale of two hairstyles

The end of my time in Tanzania and the beginning of my time in Israel didn’t have too many similarities, but more was done with my hair in a four day period than had been done in the previous four months. While returning from a walk around town several weeks ago, one of my neighbors invited me to get my hair braided. I’ve always been interested in getting my hair braided, but a little afraid. I’ve seen how people look when they get off the cruise ship. Frankly, most white people look ridiculous with braids. So I turned down the offer, but told her I might return at another time. Over the next days, I kept thinking about getting it done. I figured now was my chance, they wouldn’t charge me very much money and it wasn’t too difficult for me to convince myself it was an important Tanzanian experience.

So Wednesday afternoon I went to the woman’s house and asked her when she would be free to braid my hair. She told me to come back at 3 and to give her some money to go buy extensions. This was becoming more of an affair than I had intended, but the extensions were less than two dollars so I figured it was still worth a try. When I returned she was busy braiding another woman’s hair. I was very surprised by how fast she could work. I had always been told getting your hair braided was an all day affair, but she finished this woman’s hair in about an hour. I sat around attempting to chat with the women in Swahili, but unfortunately as my time in Tanzania came to a close, the effort I was putting into learning Swahili decreased significantly, so my conversation skills were a bit limited and I often resorted to pantomime.

After she finished braiding the other woman’s hair, it was my turn. I sat down on the mat, my friend Teresa separated the extensions into braid sized pieces and she got started braiding my hair. I had never really thought much about how much you have to pull on someone’s hair to get those tight braids in and make them look good. It was a bit uncomfortable but certainly tolerable. My rear end also got a bit sore from sitting in the same place for a couple of hours, but I was easily distracted by the enjoyable conversation with the woman and her neighbors, visits from my friends from the office and the intrigue of children, most of whom hid behind rocks to get a peek of the action, but avoid my glance. After about two hours I was all set, they tied my hair back, showed me a mirror and I was on my way. It did look pretty nice, but I was quite self conscious about it. I still felt a bit like the person on the cruise ship. The other issue was that my own hair is pretty big, with long extensions added to it, it was gigantic, and difficult to sleep on. Between the two issues, the braids only lasted a day and a half. Even still, it was a worthwhile experience, and it convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that any attempt at dreadlocks would be a dreadfully bad idea.

I arrived in Tel Aviv at about 6 am on Sunday morning, then had about 12 hours to spend in town before the rest of the groups arrived. I hadn’t had a haircut since I was home at Christmas and I had heard Tel Aviv had many good salons so I thought I’d give it a try. Wandering through central Tel Aviv looking for salons was a bit intimidating. Many of the salons looked quite expensive and others were full of men who looked like they would judge me harshly for not having a haircut in four months. For some reason being judged harshly by a male hairstylist seemed much worse than being judged harshly be a female hairstylist, but after wandering around for several hours I found a salon that looked a lot more mellow and affordable. I got a good vibe from the place, so I headed in. The man cut my hair with reckless abandon, but in the end I really liked how it looked. I headed to the internet café to share my success with the world and then for the best lunch I’d had in a while.

Unfortunately, I'm a putz and I can't find the braid pictures anymore. I'll have Katherine send them to me again, but it might take a while to e-mail photos from Tanzania. I'll get them up as soon as I can.