haircuts

Thursday: Today i went someplace new for a haircut. I'd had it trimmed shortly after arriving back simply to fix it. I didn't have a real hair cut while i was in Cameroon. A friend kindly cut it once but she was Korean and used to cutting straight glossy hair; my hair is curlier on one side than the other and was a little out of whack as a result (although it did have healthier ends). I don't know why curly/straight require different tactics, but they definitely do. The latest trim in Cameroon had been done by myself. It looked okay when my hair was pinned up off my neck, but if it was down and wet, it had obviously been cut by an amateur without a mirror! On top of that, i'd run out of conditioner my last two months in Cameroon and hadn't yet had all that mess cut off. Quite a disaster. Definitely wasn't feeling up to par in fashionable Paris en route to California.

Today, i didn't only want my hair fixed, i wanted something new. Something sassy. Something easy to create in the morning--namely wash, use a little goo and go. Voilà, an hour and 8 inches less later, it's short, sassy, and depending on how i want to look, easily taken care of. Best of all, if i don't like it in a few weeks, it will grow out to where it was by the end of 2007.

As a side note, i wish i'd taken a photo of the haircut/barber shops in Cameroon. They weren't aesthetically pleasing--no vintage leather seats, nor froo froo spongepaint on the walls; no flowers, coffee or mood music; just simple clapboard shacks or rooms with the options painted on the outside wall--but i walked past them every day. A male colleague with very fine straight blond hair went to get a haircut at one of these road-side shops. The barber gave a few snips, and then said he couldn't do it because he'd "never cut white man hair before" and didn't know what to do. He refused payment for the tentative trim he had done. And since Cameroonian women usually plaited, straightened or buzzed their hair, i can't imagine what a stylist would have thought of cutting my long, unruly fine-haired mop. I had my hair plaited once. It took about 7 hours. Scissors were not a part of the event.

Sunday: I kind of miss my old style. :-( Alas. I'll get used to it. And it will grow back.