The day I had my hair cut

I decided that I'd being putting it off long enough. On Sunday I resolved to go into the nearest town, i.e. to Kuwinda slum, and finally get my hair cut.

Now, some of you may have noticed from my photos http://picasaweb.google.com/simontreacy/KenyaSimonPhotos?authkey=Gv1sRgCJKc8525p8uFsQE# that there’s not much variation here among the males with regards to hair type. The hair styles here fall into two groups: the close shave and the let-it-grow afro. In fear of the former, I had asked around Bosco Boys if anyone knew of any place where I could get it cut instead of having it all shaved off. No one knew seemed to understand what I was on about.

Unperturbed (surely a reasonable hairdresser would dust off the scissors for a mzungu?) I set out in search of a barbers with a small posse of boys who had tagged along for a laugh.

Even at the point when I sat down in the barber’s chair I still naively thought I could get away with getting a neat trim and not a shearing. I went to lengths to explain what I wanted, to the extent of making scissor-cutting motions to the smiling barber.

‘No problem,’ he said, as he reached for his electric shaver... Resigned, I sighed and braced myself for my new life as a skinhead.

As piles of hair fell onto my lap, a nervous smile was etched onto my face. Robert, one of the accompanying Bosco Boys, gave me an encouraging thumbs up and the barber told me to relax: he’d make it look fine. Once he had finished, I examined the damage in the mirror. On the plus side, I wasn’t a skinhead, my scalp still being covered by a short carpet of hair. But, to be fair, that carpet was now pretty short.

'Very smart', was the general response from the admiring boys when I got back.

'Ah, now you look like an African,' suggested another.

I only got a truly honest appraisal this morning at breakfast when a small girl came up to me laughing: ‘You get your head cut. It looks baaaad!’