Vanity Hair
I'm a Fool
I think my hair is falling out. Loss of hair is a side effect of Lariam, the anti-malarial drug. So the trash can under the sink is a giant ball of hair and I'm constantly touching my hair, catching it up at the roots to test it's thickness. It's not as thick, I think. So I decide to talk to Dr. Sokwala about changing to a different anti-malarial. I walk into town during lunch and run into Walter Odede. He asks if he can walk with me to the doctor's office, to talk. Of course. I'm ashamed to tell Walter I want to see the doctor because I think I'm losing my hair, but I do. When Walter is sick, he can't afford to visit the doctor. Not many people in Kisumu can. He says, “I want to tell you about a boy. A street boy.”
Walter is around street boys all the time, so for him to mention one particular boy means something. I listen especially carefully as we dodge folks on the narrow city sidewalks. The boy's name is Vincent and he's from Kisii, about 75 km from Kisumu. He's an orphan with six children in the family. His older sister, 15, disappeared and Vincent thinks she may be married now. Vincent somehow made his way to Kisumu and is living on the street, though he doesn't speak Kiswahili or Luo. He speaks Kisii. Through an interpretor, Walter learns more about Vincent and recognizes he is not sniffing glue, though he hangs with boys who do. Walter is taken with this boy and wants to sponsor him in school. If someone can give the boy a place to live, Walter says, then Pambazuko can send him to school. Walter sees something special in Vincent and I trust Walter's instincts. “Sure, if you feel he should be sponsored before the other children, then I trust your assessment,” I say to Walter. He's happy.
We've reached Dr. Sokwala's office and a note says she's away until next Monday. So I ask Walter if he'd like to walk to the tailor's shop, that the top to my tailor-made suit needs altering. We walk along and Walter says he laughed when he read my blog about the measuring session. I'm glad he knows I was being playful/silly.
We turn the corner and two guys stand outside a hardware store, next to a pump. The very pump we want to buy for the well in Nyalenda. It costs 6,999 shillings (about $90USD). Made of steel and painted turquoise, the pump is manual. It looks very much like a manual stair-stepper, but very few Kenyans would understand the concept of someone stepping on a machine to exercise.
The pump is a great piece of engineering. There are two pistons in cylinders, which must be primed by adding water before beginning. These pistons are lifted up and down by stepping on the foot pedals. The water is forced into a tube or hose (the advertising poster shows a man in his garden, irrigating his crop with a long hose attached to the pump). This pump is large enough to force water 200 meters. And it looks durable. The well is now covered and we'll be ready to set the pump up in a week.
Once we're in the tailor's shop, I try on the top and show Hitesh how I want it to be shortened. Then I show him how much to take it in on the sides. His father sits behind a sewing machine, eye-level to my navel, and he's telling Hitesh to measure my hips. Surprise measuring! I turn and grin at Walter, just to be silly, and he shakes his head laughing. When we're through, I ask Walter if he knows where Cut Above is. He does. So we walk back through town talking about Pambazuko business.
Cut Above is across from the Imperial Hotel, the nicest place in Kisumu. We stop to talk outside the Imperial, where doormen stand nearby in full-length uniform. They soon ask us to enter or leave, so we leave, crossing the street and completing our business. Walter goes to work and I notice the salon's sign that says “Specialized in Asian and European Hair.” Here, beauty shops or stylist shops are called “salons” and it's pronounced “saloons.”
A cut is 500 shillings (about $6 USD). The shop is empty of clients. A middle-aged Indian woman sits behind the desk. Her English is very, very good though she immediately breaks the golden rule of handling long hair. Long hair, according to me, should be treated as though it were finely spun silk coated in soft gold. Gently. That's the mantra. Especially when someone suspects their hair is falling out, which I tell her before even sitting down! So she rips through my wet hair with a comb that has teeth 1/100000000000 of a millimeter apart. It's been nine months since I had a cut. Shameful, yes. But I have an aversion to cutting my hair, a strange psychological dependency on having it as long as possible. She does a very lovely job cutting it and bevels the ends, just as requested, so the hair curves gently in at the bottom. Suddenly, without the 2.5 inches of dead, thin ends, my hair feels abundant once again. Perhaps it's not falling out!
I walk back to work heartened and somewhat glad Dr. Sokwala wasn't in to hear my paranoid suspicions of losing all my hair. Later, Tony comes into my office. His mind is working something over. He's just returned from town, from seeing Walter, where he met Vincent, the street boy from Kisii. Tony says, “I was so moved,” and he rubs his forehead with his hands, hard. Twice. Wow. Tony grew up in Nyalenda. He's seen everything. Every kind of cruelty and injustice person can inflict on person. So for him to be moved is something. He echoes Walter's impressions of Vincent, that he's a good kid, a kind kid, one who appreciates any kind of help.
What Walter didn't tell me was Vincent has a large, infected sore on the back of his head and it's spreading, causing other open sores. Together, Walter and Tony took Vincent to a doctor in town. He saw them on the side and said Vincent will need six injections, which he'll gladly give free of charge if Walter can buy the drugs and bring them in. The six doses cost about 300 shillings, so Walter and Tony rush to get it right away.
Tony leans on my desk, rubbing his forehead. His mind is working something over. And I know what it is. Think about it, Tony, I say. Think about it at least two days. He's grinning, knowing he won't think about. “I'm going to do it,” he says, and he takes a piece of paper and writes “bed, table, mosquito net.” He wants to put the boy up in his house, temporarily. I tell him temporary may not be in Vincent's best interest, let's think how we can create a permanent solution. The man who owns the land where we're building Pambazuko's center has a house for rent next door. It is a two-room house and he'll let it for about $10 USD a month. If we have two rooms, we can have boys in one and girls in the other. Tony says we can have bunk beds built, three beds stacked. Two beds will fit in each room, which means we can handle six boys and six girls. And Tony wants to pay the rent. With a bed and roof, Vincent can go to school. Tony is no longer rubbing his forehead. He is grinning.
Tony has seen everything. Every kind of cruelty and injustice, and yet his heart still swells and he still gets excited, thinking about helping Vincent and other children.
“Walter didn't tell me about Vincent's sore,” I tell Tony. Walter didn't tell Tony, either. Tony saw it himself. And he was repulsed. He couldn't look at Vincent's head (Tony was accepted to study medicine, but in Kenya, students first learn to dissect corpses, to weed out the intolerant, and so Tony was weeded out fairly quickly). The doctor said Vincent's sore needs to be cleaned with an antiseptic, which Walter will do. Which Walter had in mind to do all day and all day yesterday and the day before, ever since he met Vincent and learned the boy's story through an interpreter. Don't I feel like a fool.
Walter walked with me to the doctor because I worry my hair is falling out, he watches as I act silly in the tailor's shop and he directs me to a hair cut place specializing in “soft” hair. All the while, Walter knows Vincent is in real need. And Walter and Tony are doing everything they can to take care of the boy. Don't I feel like a fool with my hair and clothes concerns.
Yeap. Yessiree. I'm a fool.
I think my hair is falling out. Loss of hair is a side effect of Lariam, the anti-malarial drug. So the trash can under the sink is a giant ball of hair and I'm constantly touching my hair, catching it up at the roots to test it's thickness. It's not as thick, I think. So I decide to talk to Dr. Sokwala about changing to a different anti-malarial. I walk into town during lunch and run into Walter Odede. He asks if he can walk with me to the doctor's office, to talk. Of course. I'm ashamed to tell Walter I want to see the doctor because I think I'm losing my hair, but I do. When Walter is sick, he can't afford to visit the doctor. Not many people in Kisumu can. He says, “I want to tell you about a boy. A street boy.”
Walter is around street boys all the time, so for him to mention one particular boy means something. I listen especially carefully as we dodge folks on the narrow city sidewalks. The boy's name is Vincent and he's from Kisii, about 75 km from Kisumu. He's an orphan with six children in the family. His older sister, 15, disappeared and Vincent thinks she may be married now. Vincent somehow made his way to Kisumu and is living on the street, though he doesn't speak Kiswahili or Luo. He speaks Kisii. Through an interpretor, Walter learns more about Vincent and recognizes he is not sniffing glue, though he hangs with boys who do. Walter is taken with this boy and wants to sponsor him in school. If someone can give the boy a place to live, Walter says, then Pambazuko can send him to school. Walter sees something special in Vincent and I trust Walter's instincts. “Sure, if you feel he should be sponsored before the other children, then I trust your assessment,” I say to Walter. He's happy.
We've reached Dr. Sokwala's office and a note says she's away until next Monday. So I ask Walter if he'd like to walk to the tailor's shop, that the top to my tailor-made suit needs altering. We walk along and Walter says he laughed when he read my blog about the measuring session. I'm glad he knows I was being playful/silly.
We turn the corner and two guys stand outside a hardware store, next to a pump. The very pump we want to buy for the well in Nyalenda. It costs 6,999 shillings (about $90USD). Made of steel and painted turquoise, the pump is manual. It looks very much like a manual stair-stepper, but very few Kenyans would understand the concept of someone stepping on a machine to exercise.
The pump is a great piece of engineering. There are two pistons in cylinders, which must be primed by adding water before beginning. These pistons are lifted up and down by stepping on the foot pedals. The water is forced into a tube or hose (the advertising poster shows a man in his garden, irrigating his crop with a long hose attached to the pump). This pump is large enough to force water 200 meters. And it looks durable. The well is now covered and we'll be ready to set the pump up in a week.
Once we're in the tailor's shop, I try on the top and show Hitesh how I want it to be shortened. Then I show him how much to take it in on the sides. His father sits behind a sewing machine, eye-level to my navel, and he's telling Hitesh to measure my hips. Surprise measuring! I turn and grin at Walter, just to be silly, and he shakes his head laughing. When we're through, I ask Walter if he knows where Cut Above is. He does. So we walk back through town talking about Pambazuko business.
Cut Above is across from the Imperial Hotel, the nicest place in Kisumu. We stop to talk outside the Imperial, where doormen stand nearby in full-length uniform. They soon ask us to enter or leave, so we leave, crossing the street and completing our business. Walter goes to work and I notice the salon's sign that says “Specialized in Asian and European Hair.” Here, beauty shops or stylist shops are called “salons” and it's pronounced “saloons.”
A cut is 500 shillings (about $6 USD). The shop is empty of clients. A middle-aged Indian woman sits behind the desk. Her English is very, very good though she immediately breaks the golden rule of handling long hair. Long hair, according to me, should be treated as though it were finely spun silk coated in soft gold. Gently. That's the mantra. Especially when someone suspects their hair is falling out, which I tell her before even sitting down! So she rips through my wet hair with a comb that has teeth 1/100000000000 of a millimeter apart. It's been nine months since I had a cut. Shameful, yes. But I have an aversion to cutting my hair, a strange psychological dependency on having it as long as possible. She does a very lovely job cutting it and bevels the ends, just as requested, so the hair curves gently in at the bottom. Suddenly, without the 2.5 inches of dead, thin ends, my hair feels abundant once again. Perhaps it's not falling out!
I walk back to work heartened and somewhat glad Dr. Sokwala wasn't in to hear my paranoid suspicions of losing all my hair. Later, Tony comes into my office. His mind is working something over. He's just returned from town, from seeing Walter, where he met Vincent, the street boy from Kisii. Tony says, “I was so moved,” and he rubs his forehead with his hands, hard. Twice. Wow. Tony grew up in Nyalenda. He's seen everything. Every kind of cruelty and injustice person can inflict on person. So for him to be moved is something. He echoes Walter's impressions of Vincent, that he's a good kid, a kind kid, one who appreciates any kind of help.
What Walter didn't tell me was Vincent has a large, infected sore on the back of his head and it's spreading, causing other open sores. Together, Walter and Tony took Vincent to a doctor in town. He saw them on the side and said Vincent will need six injections, which he'll gladly give free of charge if Walter can buy the drugs and bring them in. The six doses cost about 300 shillings, so Walter and Tony rush to get it right away.
Tony leans on my desk, rubbing his forehead. His mind is working something over. And I know what it is. Think about it, Tony, I say. Think about it at least two days. He's grinning, knowing he won't think about. “I'm going to do it,” he says, and he takes a piece of paper and writes “bed, table, mosquito net.” He wants to put the boy up in his house, temporarily. I tell him temporary may not be in Vincent's best interest, let's think how we can create a permanent solution. The man who owns the land where we're building Pambazuko's center has a house for rent next door. It is a two-room house and he'll let it for about $10 USD a month. If we have two rooms, we can have boys in one and girls in the other. Tony says we can have bunk beds built, three beds stacked. Two beds will fit in each room, which means we can handle six boys and six girls. And Tony wants to pay the rent. With a bed and roof, Vincent can go to school. Tony is no longer rubbing his forehead. He is grinning.
Tony has seen everything. Every kind of cruelty and injustice, and yet his heart still swells and he still gets excited, thinking about helping Vincent and other children.
“Walter didn't tell me about Vincent's sore,” I tell Tony. Walter didn't tell Tony, either. Tony saw it himself. And he was repulsed. He couldn't look at Vincent's head (Tony was accepted to study medicine, but in Kenya, students first learn to dissect corpses, to weed out the intolerant, and so Tony was weeded out fairly quickly). The doctor said Vincent's sore needs to be cleaned with an antiseptic, which Walter will do. Which Walter had in mind to do all day and all day yesterday and the day before, ever since he met Vincent and learned the boy's story through an interpreter. Don't I feel like a fool.
Walter walked with me to the doctor because I worry my hair is falling out, he watches as I act silly in the tailor's shop and he directs me to a hair cut place specializing in “soft” hair. All the while, Walter knows Vincent is in real need. And Walter and Tony are doing everything they can to take care of the boy. Don't I feel like a fool with my hair and clothes concerns.
Yeap. Yessiree. I'm a fool.
posted by Cindi at 11:16 AM
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