And so I found a lovely little hair salon…

And so I found a lovely little hair salon (AKA salunu AKA ko moriring) there by the bundu burbs of deep Pretoria North where my mommy has settled down. I'm thinking, this is going to be an interesting experience, when I walk through the dark and lovely/sun silk poster-filled-once garage-now-budding-hair emporium. I’m thinking, I seriously need to get these braids done here cos I know I ain’t gonna find them cheap ko Rosebank.

But fact is, I’ve never liked hairdressers simply because they tend to have a whole lotta attitude despite the fact that you are paying them a considerable amount of money for their service. It's a freakin business transaction for crying out loud...But the more I blog the more I realise just how traumatic childhood experiences have had a significant influence on how I turned out as an adult.

FLASHBACK TO THE GOOD OL’ DAYS: I have an aunt, who once, after deciding that teaching wasn’t quite for her, went with the tide and got herself a hair dressing certificate from some fly-by-night establishment in the city centre. Back then it was all the buzz so you ’d find one of these at every corner you turned. So after successfully completing the (very short) course, she came back home and alas, there was no long line of people waiting to pour their money into her newly acquired skill. Left with nobody willing to pay for her services, she started “practicing” on her helpless nieces and nephews. And so “the soft and (oh so) free” was bought in bulk and the honing of a recently acquired skill began.

I always had my hair relaxed when I was younger. It was just the right thing to do for any dignified female, young and old, alike, ko lekeisheneng. I never liked it. And it’s not because I didn’t like the way it looked on me. I just couldn’t stand the heat! The damn thing was hot. Too many times the thing stayed on for so long that it fried my scalp leaving me with pieces of skin peeling off of it, scarred for life, I tell you. Ouch…and then there’s the maintenance…All that oil moisturizer everyday, everywhere, on your pillow, for pete’s sake please can I play in the sand, water and run in the rain, without worrying if my hair is going to get ruined. But what I hated most was that I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

You can imagine that when my aunt started experimenting on our heads, I was livid. Now my mother didn’t have to pay for my hair to get done. Happy happy Christmas, the salunu was right in our house 24/7. So every time my aunt noticed a little bit of growth (AKA kaffir haar) starting to show, it was time for a relax. And so we suffered through the fire, the combing out of the growth to make it as straight as possible before you jump off the chair and run to the nearest tap to wash the damn chemical off cos it’s burning now and you feel like your brains are about to pop out of your skull. No matter how much we cried from the pain, she’d keep at it. Because: Bopila bo a llelwa (basically, you have to suffer for beauty). I remember my brother cried once during an s-curling session. The biggest challenge was to try your damndest not to cry, no matter how much it hurt, because you’d become the laughing stock of the entire clan. Believe me, we always sat there and waited for the tears to come. It made us feel better about our own pain, I guess. Shame, the s-curl must have really really hurt. I don’t think he ever let anyone do that to him again.

So when I could finally leave home and live on my own far far away from the tub of soft and free relaxer, I too vowed never ever to do that to myself. I guess the older I got, the more the reasons transcended the pain it involved, what with newer inventions that only burn your hair and not your skin along with it.

FLASH FORWARD TO 2007. I’ve just done a bad job of cutting off my own hair and I desperately need a professional but not expensive braiding job. At the sight of my hair, the lady (my only hope), pulls a face, starts scratching her long nails through my “kaffir haar” and asks: “Wena, ke eng mo?” like she’s touching an old piece of fish. I don’t answer because I’m pretty sure, from looking at and touching my hair that she knows exactly what it is. My pride’s telling me to walk out of there and make another plan. My vanity on the other hand…

So, we agree on a price and the easiest, least painful style she can pull off with such a disappointment of a head of hair. I’m like, cool sister, I shall stay here and listen to you moan about the texture of my hair while Michael Buble and Atomic Kitten blare through your speakers (stru!) It’s fine. I want look nice, nice! I shall go with the groove.

And so, throughout the entire ordeal, she moans and moans. I keep quite, fighting back the feeling to get up from that hard, ass-numbing chair and walk right out of there, straight home. But I can’t, what with a quarter of my hair with these things attached to it. I didn’t have the energy. And my mother would have to explain my behaviour to them long after I was gone. She’d probably have to find another garage to do her hair. That wouldn’t be nice. These are the thoughts that go through my mind as I sit there listening to this not so nice lady talk about my hair. And then, to top it off, she starts going on about how big my head is, how she’s never going to finish, as if it was the first time I was made aware of the largish nature of my head. In my head, (yes, this big one of mine) I’m thinking, I’m paying this woman. Where in the world does she get the nerve to say these things? But I sit…because of my vanity of course and the fact that the shit she’s doing with my hair is starting to come together in a really nice way.

The entire experience is made even more unbearable when they ask me what I did with my severed locks. HUH???? It turns out that you can sell or donate them, once you’re done with them of course, so that they can be attached to someone else’s hair, so they don’t have to wait years and years for their own hair to grow. HUH???? Ewwww…!!!!! Just as this whole thing sinks in, I notice that the other hairdresser is spotting a full head of locks but the hair closer to her scalp doesn’t quite look like the hair at the end of her neatly tied ponytail. I am freaked out and decide not to find out any more about this new technique in the world of hairdressing. Tjo!

Eventually she finishes the job, and it looks damn nice, and I’m glad despite all her bitching. I leave, but not without giving her a big tip to compensate for the texture and size of my head of course. Emotional blackmail, I tell you. When I get back home and look in the mirror, I’m glad that I didn’t lose my temper, like I normally would when getting really bad service.

I guess it’s the nature of hairdressers. They know that you want to look pretty and that if you throw a tantrum, you just won’t. Straight and simple, really. It’s one of the biggest power trips in history. I guess those of us who choose not to get our hair relaxed are worse off. The choice to keep my hair in its natural state makes me a hairdresser’s worst nightmare and it irks me to no end. Solution: I don’t know, man. I could slap somebody, but my mama didn’t raise me that way (plus I’m probably the biggest sissy in the entire world)! I could keep my hair locked forever, which is a great beautiful long term plan. Or I could, during this experimental phase, find the biatch in me and reciprocate the nastiness. But I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t help. I found out, after she had left, that the very respectable looking lady who sat next to me while getting some kick ass West African type do, came crawling back in shame after once telling these people she was never going back to do her hair there. Of course, they laughed at her after she had left – an evil, nasty shriek, it was. Bopila bo a llelwa, ka nnete!