A Haircut at Village

So I (Kirk) decided that I needed to get a haircut before school starts.  We had seen a hair salon at Village Market, a mall close to Rosslyn.  If you have a really good arm, you could probably throw a rock from the bottom edge of campus to Village, but there are no roads, paths, or trails that go that way, so it's a 10 minute drive instead. In fact, the area in which we live is cut with small canyons, and any driving you do isn't in a straight line, which leads to nice scenery and turned around new people.

A bit about Village.  Village is kind of the default destination for shopping unless you're looking for something in particular.  Our first day here, our host family took us there to get our phones working on the Kenyan phone system and to show us some of the stores; mainly however, we went to go to Nakumatt for groceries and supplies for setting up our home.  (Nakumatt will probably get its own post sometime in the future.)  Village is an interesting place.  We've probably been there about 6-7 times, and every time that we've been, the floor has been ripped up in a different place because of upgrades.  One time the floor by the elevators was ripped up, and two days later you couldn't tell that anything had been touched.  There's also a wide variety of stores there, including the "health food" store, the only place we'd seen steel-cut oats until Nakumatt (of course) exploded with items from the Bob's Red Mill brand.  There's also Prime Cuts (an upscale butcher shop that also sells english muffins and bagels), a kiosk that plays Frozen on a never-ending loop, and a frozen yogurt place just like Yogurtland in the Bay Area.  Last time we were there, there was a high school Korean dance and singing ensemble from the East Coast that was performing.  Today, we saw a poster advertising a Christmas Pageant--on August 5th.  Random just scratches the surface.

Anyway, we and our host family headed over there today to go to Yogurt and (obviously) Nakumatt, and I went to get a haircut.

Now, I don't have a difficult head of hair to cut.  In fact, I have almost no hair to cut, which greatly simplifies things.  In the States, Audrey normally cut my hair using clippers with no guard.  Easy peasy.  This experience was not what I was expecting.  Not bad, just not what I expected.

I walked in, and there was a woman behind the reception desk, about 4 women sitting a bit farther into the shop, and a woman styling another woman's hair toward the back.  I asked the receptionist if anybody was available to give me a haircut, and she nodded to one of the women behind her, who then took me over to a chair and had me sit down.  She immediately looked at my hair and said, "Number One?"

"No; no guard," I replied.

"No guard, like bald?" she asked.

"Yep," I said, thinking about the cuts I'd gotten in the States.

She grabbed a pair of clippers, came on over, and introduced herself as Nimo. I, being a product of American advertising, immediately thought of a little clown fish trying to escape from a dentist's office with the help of Denis Leary.

She started cutting and (because I'm a mzungu) asked me if I was visiting.  I told her that I was getting ready to start work at Rosslyn, just across the valley from Village.  Her eyes lit up a bit, and she remarked that she had a good number of clients from Rosslyn.

After a couple of minutes of her working on my head, I have to admit that I was a bit worried.  I could see some small patches that she had missed, and she seemed to be putting the clippers down.  Then she got a two liter sized bottle from under her station that was full of baby powder, got a big handful, and rubbed it onto my head.  Then she grabbed the clippers and went back to work on my now even-whiter head.

She did do a good job.  In fact, the length (or lack thereof) surprised both Audrey and I when I was done.  But the biggest surprise was still to come.

When she finished cutting, I was expecting her to brush the powder and hair off and that would be that.  However, she took me to the hair washing stations and handed me off to another woman.  At this point, I was wondering what the point of washing my "hair" was.  Not to be fazed, the new woman washed my head, and then massaged my head for about 5 minutes.  Not what I was expecting.

When the mini-massage was done, she took me back up front to find Nimo, who put aftershave on my head and gave me her card, "for your family and friends at Rosslyn."

Audrey is referring to this haircut as "the most decadent haircut ever."  I'm not complaining.  And the grand total?  700 shillings:  just under $8.  This is the cheapest haircut (that Audrey didn't do) that I've had in longer than I can remember.  I could get used to this.