When people talk about the slums here, I have a certain picture in my mind, though I have never been in one (unlike Stephen). But my mental pictures are all pretty negative. One of the staff in the finance unit here lives in the large slum closest to where we live. At a meeting the other day, someone mentioned the slums (they used that word) and wondered what she thinks when she hears the place (neighborhood) where she lives described that way. It made me feel rather uncomfortable – like she was being put down – but maybe she doesn’t see it that way.
Things are not getting better in the slums though – the small shops that the people would go to have either been destroyed or aren’t opening. At the ones that do open – and have goods to sell – prices have shot up (often at least doubled). There are food shortages and people can’t pay the prices for the food that is there. I can understand people being angry that the election didn’t turn out fairly; what I really don’t understand is all of the violence. How can killing someone better your own situation? Looting makes more sense – though I don’t think that it is the way to climb out of poverty either. I don’t know what type of pictures you are seeing in the media but here there have been photos of people being hacked to death and the paper reported the other day that 10 people were in the hospital with arrows in them. I can understand why people are scared and leaving their homes.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
A moving experience
I’m writing from Kakuma Refugee Camp, in the far northwest of Kenya, where the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Kenya/Sudan program (Sarah’s employer) plays many roles in the management of the camp, which is home to more than 60,000 people these days. I’m here because I’m producing this LWF program’s annual report for 2007 and am visiting most of the project areas in Kenya and southern Sudan to gather information and photos for the report.
This morning I was up very early, before sunrise, to see a group of Sudanese refugees leave the camp and return home. The war in their country is over, a peace agreement is signed, and these refugees are slowly leaving and going back home to start rebuilding their lives and their country, most of them starting from nothing.
We went to watch the final steps of the departure process this morning at the reception/departure center. We woke them up when we arrived while it was still dark so they could be fed a hot meal by LWF and loaded on buses. Some were already awake, however. They were checked out a final time by UNHCR on registration sheets, and each submitted a final “signature” – a thumbprint – on their identity papers.
All the families and individuals had piled up the entirety of their worldly possessions in the open areas between the sleeping shelters and then moved them over to the bus-loading area after eating breakfast. They had apparently loaded some of their other materials and possessions from their homes onto larger cargo trucks – the corrugated iron sheets that had been the roof of their houses and perhaps their sleeping mattresses.
I’m not sure how emotional the departure from the camp was for the several hundred who left this morning, but it was emotional for me to witness. I spoke to one young woman, 20 years old, who has been living in the camp since 1994. She doesn’t really remember anything about Sudan, where she was born. As I watched these people return to their home country, people who have been refugees, individuals without a home or a country, I was feeling a lot of things for/with them – they must have felt some excitement to return to their country, their familiar home areas, but anxiety as well, not to mention some sadness, perhaps, at leaving a place where many have lived for several years or more.
As I watched families scramble and try to keep small children together and round up luggage, I thought of myself and how I’ve moved long distances in my life, doing the same. As I watched these people load onto five buses, I remembered how I boarded a Greyhound bus in Boston at the end of the summer after my senior year of college to move to Chicago, which really was the beginning of my adult life. I recalled how scary that was. I knew Chicago a little from having visited a couple times, but I was going to a new home far from the one I had known for several years to establish myself, basically from scratch.
And I recalled moves I had made to new countries. Indeed, these were voluntary and not forced moves, but there are some similarities between me and my moves and the return of these people to a different country, and there are differences as well, of course. I recalled my feelings of both anxiety and excitement (felt simultaneously) about moving to a new place and country as I began my journey. Of course, when I’ve moved overseas, it has been away from home, so mine has been the opposite situation. The refugees carried the entirety of their worldly possessions with them, and what was important to them – clothing in suitcases, and, for some people, a large wooden cross carried in their hands, or a small radio-tape player, and, for many families, plastic dishes and cups and water cans. One man even had a live chicken bound by its feet by a cord and hanging upside down from his waist. When I’ve moved, I’ve had my luxuries – my extras – shipped ahead – my piano music and favorite pillow and kitchen implements – while my most valuable possessions, what I hold most dear and important, are the laptop computer, my iPod and digital camera. What a world of difference!
What an amazing time to experience with these people this morning, with all the symbolism and practical significance it carries. I felt a connection with them because of the life I’ve lived in the past several years – moving and living in two countries outside my home country and knowing what it feels like emotionally (and some of the practical challenges too!) to leave a place and start new in another country. But I also felt quite distant from them because of the differences between our moves – they as people who left their homes and country by force, and me by choice, and how difficult it is for them to go back, but how much help I’ve had from others to make my move easier. But there we were this morning, sharing that moment together, me with my memories of the past, and them experiencing those same emotions in the present.
This morning I was up very early, before sunrise, to see a group of Sudanese refugees leave the camp and return home. The war in their country is over, a peace agreement is signed, and these refugees are slowly leaving and going back home to start rebuilding their lives and their country, most of them starting from nothing.We went to watch the final steps of the departure process this morning at the reception/departure center. We woke them up when we arrived while it was still dark so they could be fed a hot meal by LWF and loaded on buses. Some were already awake, however. They were checked out a final time by UNHCR on registration sheets, and each submitted a final “signature” – a thumbprint – on their identity papers.
All the families and individuals had piled up the entirety of their worldly possessions in the open areas between the sleeping shelters and then moved them over to the bus-loading area after eating breakfast. They had apparently loaded some of their other materials and possessions from their homes onto larger cargo trucks – the corrugated iron sheets that had been the roof of their houses and perhaps their sleeping mattresses.
I’m not sure how emotional the departure from the camp was for the several hundred who left this morning, but it was emotional for me to witness. I spoke to one young woman, 20 years old, who has been living in the camp since 1994. She doesn’t really remember anything about Sudan, where she was born. As I watched these people return to their home country, people who have been refugees, individuals without a home or a country, I was feeling a lot of things for/with them – they must have felt some excitement to return to their country, their familiar home areas, but anxiety as well, not to mention some sadness, perhaps, at leaving a place where many have lived for several years or more.
As I watched families scramble and try to keep small children together and round up luggage, I thought of myself and how I’ve moved long distances in my life, doing the same. As I watched these people load onto five buses, I remembered how I boarded a Greyhound bus in Boston at the end of the summer after my senior year of college to move to Chicago, which really was the beginning of my adult life. I recalled how scary that was. I knew Chicago a little from having visited a couple times, but I was going to a new home far from the one I had known for several years to establish myself, basically from scratch.
And I recalled moves I had made to new countries. Indeed, these were voluntary and not forced moves, but there are some similarities between me and my moves and the return of these people to a different country, and there are differences as well, of course. I recalled my feelings of both anxiety and excitement (felt simultaneously) about moving to a new place and country as I began my journey. Of course, when I’ve moved overseas, it has been away from home, so mine has been the opposite situation. The refugees carried the entirety of their worldly possessions with them, and what was important to them – clothing in suitcases, and, for some people, a large wooden cross carried in their hands, or a small radio-tape player, and, for many families, plastic dishes and cups and water cans. One man even had a live chicken bound by its feet by a cord and hanging upside down from his waist. When I’ve moved, I’ve had my luxuries – my extras – shipped ahead – my piano music and favorite pillow and kitchen implements – while my most valuable possessions, what I hold most dear and important, are the laptop computer, my iPod and digital camera. What a world of difference!What an amazing time to experience with these people this morning, with all the symbolism and practical significance it carries. I felt a connection with them because of the life I’ve lived in the past several years – moving and living in two countries outside my home country and knowing what it feels like emotionally (and some of the practical challenges too!) to leave a place and start new in another country. But I also felt quite distant from them because of the differences between our moves – they as people who left their homes and country by force, and me by choice, and how difficult it is for them to go back, but how much help I’ve had from others to make my move easier. But there we were this morning, sharing that moment together, me with my memories of the past, and them experiencing those same emotions in the present.
Friday, January 25, 2008
My bizarre trip into the heart of the violence
Last Saturday I took a bit of a major trip - but just for the day - as part of the work I’ve been doing for the past few weeks for my former employer, ACT International, on this Kenya political and humanitarian crisis. There were many bizarre parts to it.
On Thursday, I was asked to come in to the Church World Service office the next morning for an informal meeting with the man I’ve been dealing with, Sam. On Friday morning, he asked me what I was doing on Saturday. “Nothing, really,” I told him. In fact, he had already booked me to fly with him up to Kisumu for the day on Saturday. Kisumu is Kenya’s third largest city and is in the extreme west, on the shores of Lake Victoria.
Now, if you’ve been living in Kenya during this crisis over the presidential election, you’ve been hearing every day on the news, when they’ve been talking about rallies and violence and looting and burning of shops and people killing each other, a few towns, and Kisumu has always been mentioned. Kisumu is where the bedrock of support is for the main opposition candidate, the man who’s in this bitter battle for the presidency, which he says was stolen in the election by the current president. His supporters, mostly of the Luo tribe, which are heavy in the Kisumu area, got so angry at the supporters of the president, who is of the Kikuyu tribe, that the Luos have been taking out the election on the Kikuyus in violent ways. So Sam was taking me into the heart of the violence! Because this is where the violence has been worst, it’s where the people are suffering the most – many people forced from their homes. Sam wanted to take me with him while he assessed the needs for a response by the ACT members and I gathered information and photos for communications purposes. He didn’t tell me we were going until the last minute so I wouldn’t get afraid and back out because of the violence, plus he decided to go quite late on a Saturday, a day the opposition party wasn’t calling for mass action (which has always turned violent). In fact, in the three days before we went there, there were rallies and all sorts of destruction caused.
So quickly to the highlights:
I got up very early on Saturday morning and went to the airport. Who was on the same flight as ours but the member of parliament for Kisumu and the secretary-general of the country's opposition party. And guess who sat next to this secretary-general, one of the top leaders of the Orange Democratic Movement, this well-known professor? Yours truly. It was interesting. All over, even when the plane was in the air, he was treated and spoken to by strangers as a celebrity politician. Well, now that I’ve gotten to “know” him, I see his name all over the place. Since he’s not the candidate who ran for president (and thus doesn’t need to be so diplomatic) but is still a high-ranking leader in the party, he is able to push the party’s aggressive agenda and say the president doesn’t care to cooperate in the peace talks that are going on right now, which I heard him saying on the radio this morning.
In Kisumu, I spent the entire morning with Sam at the compound that is the regional headquarters of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya (affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in the U.S.). Then at noon I was whisked off to another ELCK compound to see a small distribution of corn flour take place to some displaced people. Then Sam and a staff member of the Anglican Church of Kenya came to fetch me and we grabbed some Chinese take-away for a late lunch at the food court above the large grocery store in town. We ate this in the truck on our way out of town to see another group of displaced people 40 kilometers away. So here I was in the back seat of the truck, trying to eat very hot Chinese food out of containers that were impossible to open while driving over extremely bumpy roads. It was hard to guide the spoonfuls of food to my mouth, and I was determined not to spill on my white shirt. It’s a good thing I had my Chinese food to concentrate on, because occasionally I looked up at the road and could see many oncoming large trucks and buses that we were whizzing by at a high rate of speed, barely missing each time.
The other bizarre thing about our afternoon trip was that, behind me, in the bed of the truck, we were transporting a coffin. Mind you, it was empty, but Sam mentioned something about a man in this other town we were driving to whose wife had died and how he wasn’t able to get a coffin to bury her in there or wasn’t able to transport the coffin from the big city of Kisumu, so could we bring a coffin when we came…I didn’t quite understand the story – I just sort of went along with it because it was too strange to ask about. So we had picked up this coffin before we left town in a part of Kisumu where there were many shops that made wooden coffins and displayed them out on the street (I bet they were doing a brisk business in this period).
Believe me, people, I’m not making any of this up!
After stopping several times to pick up various people and goods and drop them off, after two hours, we arrived in Muhoroni, where we met with some government official at a place behind which were living many displaced families. After several minutes of this meeting, I pulled out my flight schedule and declared to Sam and all present that I was going to miss my flight, which was due to leave in about two hours back in Kisumu. Well, there was still some business for our driver to take care of, and we didn’t start heading back until 5:00 for my 6:40 flight. He assured me that I would not miss my flight. So we drove back on the same bumpy roads (luckily I didn’t have to worry about eating a meal of Chinese food this time) and actually got to the airport a half hour before my flight was to leave. I was happy to be there and be on my own, where there were fewer chances of any more bizarre things happening to me that day. Fortunately, this was the case. I was safe at home again by 8:00 after an adventurous day.
I will post on this blog the feature article I write from this trip.
On Thursday, I was asked to come in to the Church World Service office the next morning for an informal meeting with the man I’ve been dealing with, Sam. On Friday morning, he asked me what I was doing on Saturday. “Nothing, really,” I told him. In fact, he had already booked me to fly with him up to Kisumu for the day on Saturday. Kisumu is Kenya’s third largest city and is in the extreme west, on the shores of Lake Victoria.
Now, if you’ve been living in Kenya during this crisis over the presidential election, you’ve been hearing every day on the news, when they’ve been talking about rallies and violence and looting and burning of shops and people killing each other, a few towns, and Kisumu has always been mentioned. Kisumu is where the bedrock of support is for the main opposition candidate, the man who’s in this bitter battle for the presidency, which he says was stolen in the election by the current president. His supporters, mostly of the Luo tribe, which are heavy in the Kisumu area, got so angry at the supporters of the president, who is of the Kikuyu tribe, that the Luos have been taking out the election on the Kikuyus in violent ways. So Sam was taking me into the heart of the violence! Because this is where the violence has been worst, it’s where the people are suffering the most – many people forced from their homes. Sam wanted to take me with him while he assessed the needs for a response by the ACT members and I gathered information and photos for communications purposes. He didn’t tell me we were going until the last minute so I wouldn’t get afraid and back out because of the violence, plus he decided to go quite late on a Saturday, a day the opposition party wasn’t calling for mass action (which has always turned violent). In fact, in the three days before we went there, there were rallies and all sorts of destruction caused.
So quickly to the highlights:
I got up very early on Saturday morning and went to the airport. Who was on the same flight as ours but the member of parliament for Kisumu and the secretary-general of the country's opposition party. And guess who sat next to this secretary-general, one of the top leaders of the Orange Democratic Movement, this well-known professor? Yours truly. It was interesting. All over, even when the plane was in the air, he was treated and spoken to by strangers as a celebrity politician. Well, now that I’ve gotten to “know” him, I see his name all over the place. Since he’s not the candidate who ran for president (and thus doesn’t need to be so diplomatic) but is still a high-ranking leader in the party, he is able to push the party’s aggressive agenda and say the president doesn’t care to cooperate in the peace talks that are going on right now, which I heard him saying on the radio this morning.
In Kisumu, I spent the entire morning with Sam at the compound that is the regional headquarters of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya (affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in the U.S.). Then at noon I was whisked off to another ELCK compound to see a small distribution of corn flour take place to some displaced people. Then Sam and a staff member of the Anglican Church of Kenya came to fetch me and we grabbed some Chinese take-away for a late lunch at the food court above the large grocery store in town. We ate this in the truck on our way out of town to see another group of displaced people 40 kilometers away. So here I was in the back seat of the truck, trying to eat very hot Chinese food out of containers that were impossible to open while driving over extremely bumpy roads. It was hard to guide the spoonfuls of food to my mouth, and I was determined not to spill on my white shirt. It’s a good thing I had my Chinese food to concentrate on, because occasionally I looked up at the road and could see many oncoming large trucks and buses that we were whizzing by at a high rate of speed, barely missing each time.
The other bizarre thing about our afternoon trip was that, behind me, in the bed of the truck, we were transporting a coffin. Mind you, it was empty, but Sam mentioned something about a man in this other town we were driving to whose wife had died and how he wasn’t able to get a coffin to bury her in there or wasn’t able to transport the coffin from the big city of Kisumu, so could we bring a coffin when we came…I didn’t quite understand the story – I just sort of went along with it because it was too strange to ask about. So we had picked up this coffin before we left town in a part of Kisumu where there were many shops that made wooden coffins and displayed them out on the street (I bet they were doing a brisk business in this period).
Believe me, people, I’m not making any of this up!
After stopping several times to pick up various people and goods and drop them off, after two hours, we arrived in Muhoroni, where we met with some government official at a place behind which were living many displaced families. After several minutes of this meeting, I pulled out my flight schedule and declared to Sam and all present that I was going to miss my flight, which was due to leave in about two hours back in Kisumu. Well, there was still some business for our driver to take care of, and we didn’t start heading back until 5:00 for my 6:40 flight. He assured me that I would not miss my flight. So we drove back on the same bumpy roads (luckily I didn’t have to worry about eating a meal of Chinese food this time) and actually got to the airport a half hour before my flight was to leave. I was happy to be there and be on my own, where there were fewer chances of any more bizarre things happening to me that day. Fortunately, this was the case. I was safe at home again by 8:00 after an adventurous day.
I will post on this blog the feature article I write from this trip.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Christmas in January
Today was Christmas!
Strangely, we got a huge stack of Christmas cards today (we get all our mail at Sarah’s office) from many of you. The bulk of our personal Christmas mail started to trickle in last week. As we’ve been telling people, the country’s been experiencing a bit of turmoil lately, so perhaps mail delivery isn’t a priority when you’re not sure who exactly is the president and when people are being shot and killed in the streets regularly.
We opened the cards over dinner this evening, one at a time like they were Christmas presents.
Thanks to all of you whose cards we received today for the bit of Christmas cheer in our warm January!
Strangely, we got a huge stack of Christmas cards today (we get all our mail at Sarah’s office) from many of you. The bulk of our personal Christmas mail started to trickle in last week. As we’ve been telling people, the country’s been experiencing a bit of turmoil lately, so perhaps mail delivery isn’t a priority when you’re not sure who exactly is the president and when people are being shot and killed in the streets regularly.
We opened the cards over dinner this evening, one at a time like they were Christmas presents.
Thanks to all of you whose cards we received today for the bit of Christmas cheer in our warm January!
A little (neutral) patch of "home"
As Sarah mentioned on our other blog, we tried a new restaurant on Friday night - Rudy's French-Swiss Gourmet Restaurant. It's in our neighborhood.
What a delightful place. It was cool and damp outside, so we sat inside by the fire. The main room feels like an old, colonial house. All over the walls are photos of Rudy over the years. We sat under the one of him with Sir Edmund Hillary, quite appropriate for the day. On the other side of the table was a picture of him with some others playing elephant polo. He's sort of like a modern-day adventurer, although you never really think of the Swiss as adventurers - they're so conservative. On the other walls were pictures of cities in Switzerland - Basel, Zurich. We recognized most of them.
Rudy himself is, indeed, from Switzerland - St. Moritz, the German-speaking part. He was a flight attendant for Swiss Airlines for 20 years and spent many of them training flight attendants for Eastern African airlines. So he's been all over the world. He started this restaurant seven years ago. He spent the holidays in Switzerland and brought back many cheeses, he told us.
We had to have the fondue, of course. Sarah thought it was good, but I just didn't think it was the same. It wasn't heavy and thick enough. But it was a good night for a big Swiss cheesy meal. And it was fun to taste a bit of "home" - or at least our former home. It was a bit on the expensive side, however, but, of course, we were very used to that in Switzerland, so even the prices are authentic!
So, if any of you come to visit us and want a taste of Switzerland in the middle of Africa (especially if you didn't get to visit us in Europe), we'd be happy to take you to Rudy's!
What a delightful place. It was cool and damp outside, so we sat inside by the fire. The main room feels like an old, colonial house. All over the walls are photos of Rudy over the years. We sat under the one of him with Sir Edmund Hillary, quite appropriate for the day. On the other side of the table was a picture of him with some others playing elephant polo. He's sort of like a modern-day adventurer, although you never really think of the Swiss as adventurers - they're so conservative. On the other walls were pictures of cities in Switzerland - Basel, Zurich. We recognized most of them.
Rudy himself is, indeed, from Switzerland - St. Moritz, the German-speaking part. He was a flight attendant for Swiss Airlines for 20 years and spent many of them training flight attendants for Eastern African airlines. So he's been all over the world. He started this restaurant seven years ago. He spent the holidays in Switzerland and brought back many cheeses, he told us.
We had to have the fondue, of course. Sarah thought it was good, but I just didn't think it was the same. It wasn't heavy and thick enough. But it was a good night for a big Swiss cheesy meal. And it was fun to taste a bit of "home" - or at least our former home. It was a bit on the expensive side, however, but, of course, we were very used to that in Switzerland, so even the prices are authentic!
So, if any of you come to visit us and want a taste of Switzerland in the middle of Africa (especially if you didn't get to visit us in Europe), we'd be happy to take you to Rudy's!
Sunday, January 20, 2008
How guilt can fill the wealth-poverty divide
The other day, when I went into the Mathare slum in another part of Nairobi with staff from Church World Service, a member of my former employer, ACT International, to gather information for a story about the violence that’s been occurring there, I had a strange and unsettling experience.
We were shown a patch of land, almost as big as a city block, that had been completely burned down. I was told that on that spot had stood houses that belonged to about 600 families plus businesses. They were all burned down on December 30 in the violent unrest that erupted immediately following the announcement of the disputed presidential vote. The people who burned the area did it deliberately and maliciously, starting the fires from each of the corners of the lot simultaneously, so that even if the residents had tried to put out the fires – which they did – the area would have burned down anyway.
Then we actually walked across the charred remains of many houses to get to another part of the slum. And as we did this, my cell phone rang. I answered it, and it was the satellite TV company. We had a satellite TV dish installed and got this service soon after we arrived, and the person was calling to find out if we were satisfied with the installation and the service so far.
Only in Africa. What a contrast this was. Here I was, standing on the remains – nothing but ashes, in fact – of a place where 600 families (for the total number of people that is, multiply that by 5 or 6, which is the number of people humanitarian organizations use for the average family in the developing world has) were forced out and who are now homeless. And here I was talking to somebody (who was not aware of where I was standing at the moment) about the absolute luxury I have in my house that’s way too large for my family of three.
Well, it’s enough to make you pause. I can’t say that I will now obey the biblical mandate to go out and sell everything I have and give it to the poor. I’m not sure what exactly I should do, because even if we get rid of the satellite TV, then we’ll still have many luxuries here, and our arrangement to have some of these luxuries is a bit intentional. But incidents like this only make it harder to come to Africa to live as an expatriate and to work for a humanitarian organization where, by design, my job is to come into contact with the poorest of the poor, people who have been through some of the worst experiences of their lives, while having one foot back in the world of absolute comfort, only a few miles away.
We were shown a patch of land, almost as big as a city block, that had been completely burned down. I was told that on that spot had stood houses that belonged to about 600 families plus businesses. They were all burned down on December 30 in the violent unrest that erupted immediately following the announcement of the disputed presidential vote. The people who burned the area did it deliberately and maliciously, starting the fires from each of the corners of the lot simultaneously, so that even if the residents had tried to put out the fires – which they did – the area would have burned down anyway.Then we actually walked across the charred remains of many houses to get to another part of the slum. And as we did this, my cell phone rang. I answered it, and it was the satellite TV company. We had a satellite TV dish installed and got this service soon after we arrived, and the person was calling to find out if we were satisfied with the installation and the service so far.
Only in Africa. What a contrast this was. Here I was, standing on the remains – nothing but ashes, in fact – of a place where 600 families (for the total number of people that is, multiply that by 5 or 6, which is the number of people humanitarian organizations use for the average family in the developing world has) were forced out and who are now homeless. And here I was talking to somebody (who was not aware of where I was standing at the moment) about the absolute luxury I have in my house that’s way too large for my family of three.
Well, it’s enough to make you pause. I can’t say that I will now obey the biblical mandate to go out and sell everything I have and give it to the poor. I’m not sure what exactly I should do, because even if we get rid of the satellite TV, then we’ll still have many luxuries here, and our arrangement to have some of these luxuries is a bit intentional. But incidents like this only make it harder to come to Africa to live as an expatriate and to work for a humanitarian organization where, by design, my job is to come into contact with the poorest of the poor, people who have been through some of the worst experiences of their lives, while having one foot back in the world of absolute comfort, only a few miles away.
See the article I wrote after this visit to this slum in an earlier post on this blog.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Welcome to Africa column: My new Kenyan coiffure
In this edition of this new column, I will tell you about getting a haircut in Nairobi. I’ve gotten it done twice since we moved here, both times at a place at the shopping center close to our house. Parts of it are quite different than in Europe or the U.S.
I’ve gone to a place that’s a bit of a barber shop-salon combination – they cut both men’s and women’s hair – and therefore the haircut itself is like this – a sort of barber-salon cut. Like at a barber shop, they don’t wash your hair (for men, at least) before cutting it. The cutting part is pretty much the same – what I’m used to.
But then as they clean up, that’s when a few surprises come. Last time, but not so much this time (today), the cutter took a towel and essentially batted at my head with a large wad of it, like one would bat against a wall with a folded newspaper or magazine when trying to kill a fly. This was apparently to get the large clumps of cut hair, and perhaps some of the fine snips of hair that cling to one’s face, off my head. He did this a few times last time.
Then they disappear into the back and come back with a small plastic tub full of warm water. Into that they put a few drops of what smells like Pine-Sol – a disinfectant. Isn’t this for cleaning your kitchen floor well, rather than putting on your face and head? Then, as if getting whacked with a towel a few times wasn’t bad enough, they take a washcloth from this kitchen-floor-cleaning solution and wipe your face and back of your neck with it – not gently, but with great pressure, as if scrubbing dirt stains off linoleum (doesn’t it mean you have to use less elbow grease when you use Pine-Sol?). They also scrub your hair/scalp quite vigorously with this washcloth, I suppose as a substitute to rinsing the fine hairs out after cutting. After this step, one feels quite manhandled. No gentle massages while getting one’s hair shampooed at this salon.
I suppose I could try going to a different place, but usually I go during the day while Sarah has the car at work, so I don’t have many choices to get to by foot.
I’ve gone to a place that’s a bit of a barber shop-salon combination – they cut both men’s and women’s hair – and therefore the haircut itself is like this – a sort of barber-salon cut. Like at a barber shop, they don’t wash your hair (for men, at least) before cutting it. The cutting part is pretty much the same – what I’m used to.
But then as they clean up, that’s when a few surprises come. Last time, but not so much this time (today), the cutter took a towel and essentially batted at my head with a large wad of it, like one would bat against a wall with a folded newspaper or magazine when trying to kill a fly. This was apparently to get the large clumps of cut hair, and perhaps some of the fine snips of hair that cling to one’s face, off my head. He did this a few times last time.
Then they disappear into the back and come back with a small plastic tub full of warm water. Into that they put a few drops of what smells like Pine-Sol – a disinfectant. Isn’t this for cleaning your kitchen floor well, rather than putting on your face and head? Then, as if getting whacked with a towel a few times wasn’t bad enough, they take a washcloth from this kitchen-floor-cleaning solution and wipe your face and back of your neck with it – not gently, but with great pressure, as if scrubbing dirt stains off linoleum (doesn’t it mean you have to use less elbow grease when you use Pine-Sol?). They also scrub your hair/scalp quite vigorously with this washcloth, I suppose as a substitute to rinsing the fine hairs out after cutting. After this step, one feels quite manhandled. No gentle massages while getting one’s hair shampooed at this salon.
I suppose I could try going to a different place, but usually I go during the day while Sarah has the car at work, so I don’t have many choices to get to by foot.
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