Rewind

So, Since I was suppose to have started this blog along time ago, I now have to rewind to the beginning of the trip. My first blog would have been entitled "African Hairdressing in Virginia or You'd better go to Washington child".

Now it may see a little trivial to talk about hair for my first blog, but maybe you might change your mind after I'm done, if you don't then the truth is I really don't care. So there!

I had the brilliant idea of locking my hair simply because I was tired of doing it myself and I was looking for an easier way to mange it. For anyone who does not have kinky hair, you have no idea how time consuming it can be to get it done. The washing, then the drying and finally the platting, weaving or braiding. This can take HOURS! And I did it all myself mostly because I had lost faith in hairdressers, but I found a hairdresser who was recommended to me by a friend who had locks herself, very lovely locks too.

I feet awkward at hairdressing salons, always have. The women chatter and I usually had nothing to add, plus I was a bit of a nerd, so what they talk about is of little, or no consequence to me. I was also reminded a bit of high school, you know what I'm talking about. High schools are always divided into cliques, the pretty dumb girls, the smart ugly girls, and the girls who don't fit into either group. I think I was in between, I was not dumb but I was not exactly Einstein either.
Hairdressers always remind me of dumb pretty girls from high school with their short skirts and perfect hair and perfect nails. So I hate salons because for some reason they always take me back to high school. I guess I never realized that before.

But I went. And discovered that my hairdresser was someone I had known growing up, now I know you are thinking that must have made it easier right? Hell no! It made it worse! Having someone with their hands in your hair is a very intimate thing, It was uncomfortable to have that kind of intimacy with a stranger, a familiar stranger, for that's what she was.
So I grudgingly went every 2 weeks for 4 months. When we left Barbados for the US, I though, I could continue this anywhere right? I mean, black people live everywhere and where there are black people there are hair salons.

The area in Virginia where we stayed was multiracial, but I could count on my hand the number of black people I saw. By multiracial I mean there were Vietnamese Americas, Latin Americans and Asian Americans. I remember walking all around the place looking for a hair salon, now I wasn't desperate yet, it was just a precaution. By the time I was desperate I thought I had found a place that I thought catered to black hair. I was happy to discover that it was in fact in walking distance and happily took off to become a walk-in.

I had my first taste of apprehension when I looked inside before I even got to the door (there were a lot of glass windows) I only saw some Latina chicks inside, they looked like hairdressers not customers. But I had come this far so I open the door and went in. The looked at me as if to say "where are you going? Don't you know you are in the wrong place?" I asked if they did hair locking. They answered me in Spanish. Immediately what little hope I had was crumbled. determined to get at least something out of this trip I decided to enquire if they knew where I could find a salon that would fix hair for someone like me. We managed to communicate in broken english and the answer was of course no.

I had to take a train to Washington DC to get my hair done. And even there there was only one person in the salon who did locks, a woman from Senegal. She told me my locks needed tidying up and she went to town with a scissors. When she was done I though it was lovely. She convinced me to buy these sprays to moisturize and shine my renewed locks. Later I discovered that they in fact made me break out in a rash, I should have known. Plus she had trimmed a little too closely, about 3 or 4 of my locks fell off!!! I now had patches! Patches!

So once again I have take matters into my own hands, the locks are gone and now my hair is braided because that is one thing that they can't #$%#$-up right? lol

Well I 'd better end it here and now, that was quite a lot to say for a first time. Next week or maybe tomorrow, "Texas or Bubbas & Pick-ups"