So getting a haircut is simple enough in theory. You find time to get one, you find a place to go and you are clear and capable in describing what you want (I usually bring a picture for reference). Simple enough. However, I have found very few things to be entirely simple or straightforward here on this mission or in this country. First, we have very limited days off and they usually fall on Sundays, which here means nearly all of the businesses are closed. Also, it is challenging for us to get transportation anywhere into busy, traffic-ridden Freetown for a variety of reasons.
Now, many people told me about a few nice Lebanese places I could go to get my haircut. However, I really didn’t want to wait even longer for my haircut (as I would not have a weekday off for another few weeks) and I couldn’t be bothered to think of a way to get transport there. So that led me to think of a very quick and convenient solution. On my route that I walk to work, there is a little “salon” on the side of the road. I walk by it every day and it was just too simple to pass up as I could walk there right after work and then return home before it got too late. Literally a stop along the way. The place looked something like the picture below. In fact, there are many many barber shops that look very similar to this spread all over Freetown. My favorite little place thus far had the title “Head Doctor” written boldly across the front. Well, I guess that’s one way of looking at it lol. I also drove past a place with this sign: “TO GOD BE THE GLORY Hair Salon”. Um, look, I will give anyone the credit if they get me lookin’ that level of glorious 😏.
To be fair, this probably wasn’t the greatest idea from the very get go. But I just wanted to get the haircut over and done with. My saving grace is that my two friends accompanied me to this place even though I hadn’t really expected them to want to come along. We arrived at the shack and a young man greeted us (the barber). There was also another man sitting and waiting, a very nice customer who insisted that I go first. I showed the barber a picture of the haircut I wanted. He said no problemo he could do it and I climbed into the chair. Moments later, my world came crashing down. Well, not quite, but huge chunks of my hair definitely did lol.
I won’t bore you with all the details but I will cover some of the highlights of my Haircut from Hell Hour:
**Towards the end of the haircut there was a small crowd outside looking in at the fiasco of what must have been a very entertaining scene: white woman getting her haircut in a shack by a Sierra Leone man.
The list goes on.
The next morning I went down to the kitchen for coffee and one of my coworkers upon seeing me asked with great concern, “are you okay? What happened?” As if I had been in a fight lol. Gurl I was definitely in a fight and my hair lost. This was followed by a week of many very puzzled looks from everyone who saw me. Their faces looked almost strained from trying to hide their shock and confusion about my new hairstyle. I know this sounds overly dramatic but that doesn’t make it untrue.
Well. Long story short, I survived. And luckily my hair grows fast. And even luckier is there was somebody in the house who was able to do some “cleaning up” of the damage. While cutting my hair she muttered under her breath, “those mother$#@!ers” (*said in a thick Serbian accent*) referring to the barber who did all the damage lol.
After a few weeks had passed and I had gotten over my trauma I began to realize two things about my experience. One is that no matter what, at some point in your life you have to rely on others and this reliance makes us vulnerable. To me, being vulnerable is soooo scary and uncomfortable. There is a quote I like that reads, “vulnerability is the only bridge to build connection”. Of course, I wasn’t expecting it but this experience has probably made my friends and I laugh the most. Whenever it comes up in conversations, they end up light-heartedly teasing me (“just let me keep my bAAAngs!”) and we have such a wonderfully rich laugh about it. I actually feel that this silly terrible haircut, and the fact that my two friends were there to experience all this craziness with me, has actually brought us closer together. Just picture it: three white women squeezed into a shack while a black barber attempted to cut hair that was so radically different from his own, most likely for the first time in his life 😆 Sounds like a great bonding experience to me.
The other connection I became aware of after this whole thing was an unexpected one: my connection to my own light-heartedness and sense of humor. For if you can’t laugh at yourself during the actual moment, well then you better be able to have a very good chuckle (preferably, belly laugh) at yourself when looking back in retrospect lol. This whole thing was a good reminder of the need to stop being so serious and to laugh at myself a little more often, and that is why I took and shared the funny pictures. A bad haircut is just that. It’s not the end of the world.
But can I just say one more time how bad this haircut was lol 😆? Even so, letting yourself be vulnerable every now and then is a good thing. Relying on other human beings is impossible to avoid so being scared of the unexpected is fine and natural. But sometimes you just have to take a chance and go with the flow because you never quite know how things will end up. For instance, the next international worker (a young Italian surgeon) who took a chance at the shack ended up with a very nice dye job. Shoe polish in the hair makes such a nice glossy shade of black 😂🤣😂🤣. Yes, that actually happened.
Little Big Life 
O M G! I just about laughed my was off .. literally (!) when I read this. I showed Allen your pictures, and at first ye was like, ‘what?’ Then he focused in on your profile…
We both laughed so hard we were tearing up! Oh Ashia, your blog has been so. Much fun and captivating to read these small yet big moments of life and lessons! Thanks so much for sharing friend! Miss you!! 😉
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