LOOKING GOOD!

Once again, apologies for not writing about this experience sooner. This experience was an experience that immersed us much deeper into Kenyan culture and brought Mackenzie and I much much closer to the Kenyan people! That experience......was getting our hair braided.

Back home you might be thinking this was an insignificant experience and nothing to exciting but it is quite the process to get your hair braided and every women in Kenya goes and gets their hair done and so we were experiencing something every Kenyan women goes through.

Mackenzie and I were so excited for this experience but hadn't realized that it was going to take 3 HOURS to get our hair braided or how painful it was going to be. We sat in our chairs as two Kenyan women tackled our Mazungu hair. They worked from the bottom to the top. Sectioning off tiny tiny squares of hair and with swift fingers, braided tiny braids all over our head. I lucked out on having a women who braided tightly but didn't do it painfully. Mackenzie wasn't so lucky. Once the 3hrs were over, we were looking pretty fine and feeling like new women!

When we walked out of the salon, the reactions no longer consisted of people just yelling Muzungu but people actually stopping and staring. When we were standing outside of the salon, we had one grandmother literally just stop, stand and stare for quite a while! Until we waved at her, snapping her out of her trance. It was so nice to have our hair braided, we didn't have to wash our hair everyday, SCORE! Bucket showers can be a pain when you have long hair, we thought we looked pretty cool and maybe just maybe we would fit in better.

Unfortunately, my hair was to soft for the braids to stay in. They started to un-braid (I can't think of the word that is opposite of braided) the next day. They don't put hair bands on the end of the braids because typically their dealing with fake hair which doesn't un-braid but Muzungu hair is to soft to keep the braids in. Mackenzie was lucky and because here hair is thicker then mine the braids stayed in for a while. However, by the end of the first week her head was killing her and she had to take them out. Although our lives with braids was short lived, I was so happy we got to have that experience. I felt really cool for a short period of time! I'm sure I will have it done again and have hair ties put in so that they stay  but for the time being I will have to live with my typical hair and wait until the next time I muster up the patience to sit for 3 hrs and get my hair braided again.

Thanks for reading!