January is the longest month

The other night we were sixteen women in a tiny place, called "Chez Christy- Salon de Beauté”, having our hair done -- which for Africans means taking off their wig and getting some parts of real or fake hair (real from India, fake from China) sewn into their short cropped own hair. In fact, you don't see too many scissors at an African hair salon, rather heaps of needles and thread, and a smoking machine that looks like a waffle maker. No waffles in there, but some pieces of iron that get very hot and will straighten or curl any piece of hair you put in it.

I have to say that I love watching it all because when it's well done, I barely can tell that a woman is wearing a wig. So when she walks in, sits down with a plop and then with one movement brushes it off and reveals a rather bald looking head, I am pretty shocked. And then, a few hours later, she will walk out with an Asian look - long straight black hair, for example, or something else all together. Anyway, a completely different look from the one she walked in with. In fact, I often have trouble recognizing my female colleagues because every Monday they walk in with a totally different style - they can be suddenly a Cleopatra, or a wild tigress or a punk or... It's endless, you should come see for yourself!

So there we were, all 16 of us, half staff and half clients, getting their hair done, their nails polished or their feet scrubbed, when suddenly a man knocked on the door. He looked middle aged and rather well dressed, not a masked bandit with a rifle or machete. However, the salon owner told her staff to keep the door locked and not let him in, because that's how the thieves operated these days, she said, when holdups where all too common now that everyone was trying to find some money to get through the month of January, which they say is the longest, after all the money has been spent on the year end festivities.

We just sat there, wondering what we had in our purses and how bad it would be to lose them. The man at the door however was not willing to go away and tried to make the girl open the door. I felt like one of those goats in the fairy tale where the wolf comes knocking on the door and they go and hide in the tall clock. Looking around I could not see any clock, just a few tiny cupboards, barely enough to hide a pint-sized- dwarf.

The man kept gesturing to be let in. The owner stood up and made a NO sign. The man peeked through the glass door, trying to get a better look of who was inside. I suddenly stood up and did the Japanese sign for NO, like I'd once seen in a Toyota add. I'm not sure if he understood that, he might have thought that me, the only white there, meant to slit his throat. Or more likely, that he might get in trouble when a white is involved. Anyway, he turned around and walked away.

I can't tell you how relieved we all were, though for a while we were sure that he was just hiding behind a car and might try to slip in as soon as we needed to open the door to let a customer out. But after half an hour, when he had not shown up again, we started to relax.

Meanwhile the staff continued sewing and braiding, some clients can sit there for up to four hours to get their hair done, and return the next day to finish it off with another couple of hours, especially when they want very intricate patterns using very fine meshes to weave in or sew in, according to the client’s choice. In the meantime they'll just wrap a colorful piece of cloth around their head. With all this weaving and sewing that you see here, of women and girls’ hair, even on the pavements of Abidjan, it should not have been surprising that a friend of mine found her five year old daughter cutting off her lovely blond curls with a scissor. "What the hell are you doing, stop that immediately" she yelled at the little one, who responded calmly: "Mum, no need to get into such a fit! If you don't like it, I'll just sew it back on tomorrow!'

Et voila, so far on hair in Ivory Coast.

Big hugs,

Griet