Mombasa or Bust: Part II

With two hours to kill, Katie and I walked in circles around the courtyard of the Tanga bus station, since there was nothing else to do. We later learned from a Tanzanian passenger that the bus station vendors had nicknamed each of us. Katie, a Canadian of Irish heritage with curly hair and freckles, was named “beer girl” presumably for a Guinness beer T-shirt she wore. My shoulder-length blonde hair was clipped into a ponytail and I was dressed modestly in an ankle-length skirt and a long-sleeved blouse, but was mysteriously branded "woman of the night."

We boarded the second bus at the appointed departure time. The bus remained motionless for an hour and forty minutes.  During that time, vendors pressed against the bus, shouting into the open windows in the hopes of making a few shillings. I had a choice almost as varied as the selection offered by my favorite grocer back home, without moving from my seat: peanuts, cashews, hardboiled eggs, vegetable or beef samosas, soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, mangos, bananas, oranges, combs, mirrors, and hair curlers.

But the strangest item of all was a single tan-colored brassiere tacked to a board by its strap, hanging limp like a dead fish among the other sundry items for sale. Did this aspiring undergarment salesman really hope to make a sale of a bra through a bus window?

“Sir, is that a B or a C cup?”

The bus finally left and stopped a minute later at the petrol station. After fueling, we returned to the bus station. After thirty minutes we left again and drove to a private residence in town. This seemed to be a normal layover since all of the passengers immediately exited to stretch and have a smoke. There, we waited for another thirty minutes while one of the passengers packed his luggage. We drove from the passenger’s home and returned directly to the Tanga bus station. I was now feeling as though I’d entered the Tanga, Tanzania episode of The Twilight Zone. 

              We finally left the station for a third time and stopped at a nearby ice cream shop to pick up more passengers where an American and Dutch man boarded. As the American passed us, his first words were, "Are you enjoying this never-ending nightmare?"  They’d had a far worse journey having left Dar-es-Salaam early that morning, but along the way their bus had broken down.  They’d been stranded on the roadside for hours without food or water. I gave them my cashews, which they immediately devoured.

Finally, on our way once again, our second “express, non-stop” bus to Mombasa stopped repeatedly at tiny villages along the way. No one boarded, but at every village the driver yelled out to ask if so-and-so friend of his was there. At each village, a chorus of voices rang out in unison, “Hayupo” (Swahili for he's not here) and we continued on.

Other than kerosene lamps and flickering candlelight, there was nothing to see in the night so dark it was like traveling through a black hole. I dozed at times, but deep sleep eluded me. Anyone who has traveled in East Africa knows that the condition of the roads is frightful because they are pockmarked every few meters with potholes the size of small craters. And, because it's so dark, the driver often misses them.                 There's nothing like going 80 k.p.h. over a massive pothole. Many times during the ride, I was jolted from a light slumber as I hurled to the ceiling and then plummeted back down into my seat. Under the circumstances, I think I should have been entitled to a fifty percent refund on my bus fare since I was out of my seat, for at least half the trip, but I didn’t think it would be worth the time for a four-dollar reimbursement.

              Just before the border crossing into Kenya, a torrential rain broke.  The parched ground was suddenly flooded with an inch of water. The Kenyan customs officer, an underpaid, bored bureaucrat in a crisp white uniform, chose this opportune time to search our luggage. All of the passengers on the bus dragged or carried their luggage, fifty feet through the muddy deluge, to the customs building. After a superficial glance at the contents of our drenched luggage, the customs official was apparently satisfied that no contraband was present after all and we were allowed to return to the bus through the downpour. I'm fairly certain that if someone chose to smuggle drugs or perhaps a cache of arms across an international border, they wouldn’t leave them lying on top of their luggage!

              We finally arrived in Mombasa at the stroke of midnight with only moments to spare to catch the last ferry of the night into the city.  A promised twelve-hour trip had taken eighteen hours, about the time it would’ve taken to fly from Tanzania to New York. Fortunately, Katie and I were able to enlist the help of our fellow male passengers in misery, who gallantly accompanied us by taxi to a guesthouse, where we spent a safe and uneventful night before heading to the beach the next day.

Mombasa or Bust (Part I)

 “Whatever you do, don’t arrive in Mombasa after dark!”

We had every intention of heeding this warning, made repeatedly by Kenyan friends in the know.  But bus travel in East Africa is infamous for its unreliability, so it was almost assured that we’d arrive in Mombasa at the worst possible hour.

My housemate Katie and I were halfway through a one-year volunteer program in Arusha, Tanzania. We’d planned to meet some Kenyan friends on the beach in Mombasa for the New Year holiday, but our travel options from Arusha were limited. Air travel, given our budgets, was out of the question.  Because we’d waited until the last moment to make travel arrangements our first choice, taking the shuttle to Nairobi and then the overnight Nairobi – Mombasa train, was no longer available as the first and second-class compartments had been booked for weeks. We were left with only one grim alternative, the Simba Express Luxury Coach.

My first clue that the coach would be neither express nor luxury was of course the name.  In Tanzania, the “express” buses are usually the slowest. The “luxury” buses are typically rusting hulks, teeming with masses of humanity that pitch to and fro across Africa, like toddlers learning to walk.

As a veteran of six months of excruciating bus trips within Tanzania, I’d learned that all is fair in love and bus ticket sales.  Exaggeration, if not outright lying, is a standard business practice.  So when the ticket salesman at the central bus station in Arusha assured us that we'd have ample leg room in our reserved front seats, that the bus was direct to Mombasa, it was scheduled to arrive no later than six in the evening, and it was “non-stop,”I knew enough not to believe him. I faced our journey with the forbidding resignation of one confronted with months of painful dental procedures.

My seat was a single at the very front of the bus. Katie was directly behind me. Every square inch of the bus, including what would have been my “ample leg room,” was packed with people, luggage and provisions from the market: bunches of bananas, bags of oranges and plums, baskets piled with carrots and tomatoes and plastic totes containing half-suffocated chickens.

Children were made to stand in the aisles while their mothers and fathers perched on the luggage rack, to my right. A certain numbing rhythm developed as a child swayed, every few seconds, into my right shoulder. The ageless woman seated opposite me periodically gummed an orange. Her mouth puckered like a fish as she spat the seeds around the child, across my lap, and through the open window to my left. Most, but not quite all of the seeds escaped out of the window. Whenever a seed landed on me, the woman simply smiled, exposing her few remaining slanted yellowing teeth rooted in her brown gums.

I turned to the scenery. Mount Kilimanjaro was hidden that day, but as we traveled east from Moshi, I saw the southern Pare Mountains appear suddenly from the arid plains like a sleeping giant blanketed in green. This made me think of sleeping, which I’d desperately tried, but it proved impossible.

Along the way, we stopped at every village, mud hut, cattle dip, baobab tree, termite mound and watering hole. At every stop, streams of passengers boarded and a few got off. The reason for the number of stops is simple. Our “luxury coach” was the only local transportation available for the thousands of rural residents who used it to visit relatives and to go to the market.

It took eight hours to cover the two hundred sixty miles between Arusha and Tanga, a port city on Tanzania’s coast, where Katie and I learned that our direct-non-stop-to-Mombasa luxury bus, had terminated its journey. The bus driver informed us that a second "express, non-stop" bus was scheduled to depart in just two hours and arrive in Mombasa at 8 p.m. With over one hundred miles to go, arriving before dark was now impossible.

Extreme Penny-Pinching

I can still picture my mother spending long hours at the kitchen table scouring the Sunday newspaper, not for the latest news, but for bargains.  This was in the late-sixties—before double coupon bonus days, midnight madness and weekend blowout sales. It was the dull age of retailing when one might see a “half-yearly” or “Lincoln’s Birthday” sale, but for the most part you were lucky if Gimbels Department Store had foundations at 17 ½ percent off.

Mom would sneak a cigarette or two late at night, a habit she’d successfully kept hidden until I was in high school, and pour over the advertisements like a bookie adjusting her point spreads.  Her total absorption burned holes through the vinyl gingham red-checked tablecloth. 

No household item escaped my mother’s frugality. Plastic bags of all types became valued pieces of luggage.  They were washed, dried and re-used again and again until the synthetic fibers finally disintegrated and were given a proper burial in our trash bin.

On special nights out I’d often catch mom spelunking inside a nearly empty tube of lipstick with a bobby pin. “The tube is almost half full,” she’d say.

My two brothers, sandwiched between two older and two younger sisters, had to endure the worst of mom’s thriftiness; wearing hand-me-down leotards from their big sisters under their pants in the cold winter months.  Under duress, my brothers donned thick, stretchy tights of the type worn by Robin Hood and Superman, but in girlish pinks and yellows.  It might have worked if only it had been several years later when Joe Namath made pantyhose for men seem GQ. To this day, it’s a taboo subject at family gatherings.  If anyone wants to bring an immediate flush of embarrassment to my brothers and send them into an emotional tailspin, just mention the word “leotard.”

There were no trips to the barbershop for my brothers.  Haircuts for them were more like hair divestitures; their heads were shaved, military style.  Mom would sit them down on a chair in the backyard, throw a towel over their shoulders and shear their heads practically down to the bone.

I’d add to their misery by rubbing my hands over their freshly-shorn, sandpapered skulls saying, “Women go wild!”

            But my sisters and I also suffered my mother’s tonsorial mutilations.  Every few weeks mom would have us sit on chairs in the kitchen with the linoleum floor lined with newspapers.  She would pull out scotch tape to secure our perfectly straight hair across our foreheads to trim our bangs.  It never did the trick. Year after year of childhood photos show our bangs slanting upwards, on a twenty-degree angle, giving each of us a vaguely extraterrestrial, Mr. Spock-type look.

There was no reason to buy new rain boots when our old leaky boots could be made weatherproof through mom’s ingenious re-use of Wonder bread bags.  Of course she meant well, she wanted our feet to be warm and dry when we got to school.  But what she didn’t foresee was the horrible cloakroom scene when the boots came off and we were left wearing the bags.  With the ensuing taunting from classmates at the unmistakable primary red, yellow and blue Wonder balloons covering our shoes, it’s a wonder none of my siblings or I were humiliated into a lifetime of intensive psychotherapy.

We six bread-bag-footed children of Vulcan bangs and buzz cuts and unisex leotards skipped through our childhoods believing this was all perfectly normal.  And then one day I discovered that my mom was different.  It could’ve been the time I learned that our daily treat of baked cakes and cookies made from scratch, always waiting for us after school on the kitchen table, was special because other mothers made theirs from something called mixes.  Or perhaps it was when I found out that no other mothers in our neighborhood made soap out of lye and pig’s lard from the hog my father had slaughtered each year. (We lived in the city.)

I’d like to say I’ve completely escaped mom’s legacy of exuberant prudence, but as Cokie Roberts wrote, “We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters.”  How true.  I’m just like her. I can’t seem to throw out a plastic bag to save my life. 

Co-Ed Naked Spa Hopping

            My friend Diane and I were spending two weeks traveling around Japan, which included a jaunt to the southern island of Kyushu where Beppu is located.  Beppu is a geo-thermal wonderland of natural hot mineral springs.  Billows of steam rise everywhere, giving the town an atmosphere of a giant outdoor sauna or a film noir movie set.  We had already spent several days in Beppu experiencing the wonderful variety of available tourist attractions.  We had been buried in 140 degree sand up to our necks, had enjoyed several mineral baths that claimed therapeutic properties ranging from improving one’s complexion to healing arthritis, and had toured around the “hells” of Beppu, which are boiling ponds ranging in color from vermilion to sky blue.

It was our last day and we had just hours left before our train departed to Tokyo.  I felt we had “done” Beppu, but soon learned that Beppu was not “done” with us. 

While taking our final stroll around town, we came upon another spa that Diane wanted to try.  I had immediate reservations since this resort was not mentioned in my guidebook and all of the signs were in Japanese, leading me to believe this was “off the beaten track” for tourists.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I believe the best part of traveling happens spontaneously and I love the adventure of having “non-touristy, local” experiences.  But when it comes to exposing my body, I’m extra cautious.   

“Come on.  We’re fourteen time zones away from everyone we know,” Diane argued.  She had a point.  Completely ignoring my gut that was shouting, “Don’t do it!” always a mistake, we entered the building.  

We disrobed in the locker room and entered a communal indoor mud bath. Luxuriating in the slick mud with other women, we moved back and forth between the hotter and cooler areas of the bath until we had had enough. We rinsed off under a cold shower and just before stepping outside, one of the attendants grabbed onto my arm.  She urgently tried to tell me something that was obviously very important.  But my ignorance of the language and inability to decipher Japanese charades had rendered her communiqué impossible to interpret.

So it was that Diane and I, two fairly well-endowed women, stepped outside, naked as the day we were born, whereupon we made three crucial discoveries: we were the only Gaijin (foreigners) at the spa, the resort was co-ed, and the two of us were missing one small, but essential item.  Every Japanese person we encountered, and 99.9 percent of them were of the male persuasion, was holding a small hand towel the size of a wash cloth, over his genitals.

Diane and I were not just naked. We were beyond naked. We were Über-naked.

Had we missed the warning sign in the locker room: “Please remember, don’t shame Buddha, all of the Shinto deities and the memory of hundreds of generations of your ancestors by stepping outside without your little washcloth?”  Or perhaps there was no sign because the Japanese are born holding these tiny cloths as they exit the birth canal?

Desperate to cover ourselves, Diane and I crisscrossed our arms over our bodies.  With our hands hovering ineffectively over our nether regions, we darted to the nearest hot spring for cover.  The dark gray, mineral-laden water conveniently covered our nudity, and thankfully, we were alone. 

But not for long.

Apparently, word of the two, too-naked, big-breasted American women, had spread like wildfire throughout the spa.  Suddenly, dozens of extraordinarily friendly men, also unclothed, but of course with the obligatory washcloths, joined us in our pool.  I did my best to fend off the many overtures from these interlopers who floated dangerously into my personal space, trying to chat us up.  The Japanese love nothing more than to practice English, but the last thing I wanted to do was encourage naked fraternizing. 

After a few minutes, I noticed that I had begun sweating profusely from the intense heat. After fifteen minutes, I felt nauseous.

I knew that I had to get out of this bubbling caldron, but escaping would have required climbing up a three-foot ladder to exit the pool, thereby providing a front-row view of that to which only gynecologists and lovers should be privy. My mind, which was now melting along with the rest of me, struggled to reason that I was thousands of miles from home, and the chance that I would ever see any of these men again was infinitesimally small.  But I couldn’t bear the thought of baring my undercarriage, free of charge, to this rapt group of strangers.  Diane agreed, so the two of us waited it out with a steely determination that would have impressed any prisoner of war.

One by one, our fan club left, and finally, we were alone, once again.  We quickly made our getaway. Like two boiled lobsters plucked from a pot, steam rose off our crimson bodies, as we climbed out and once again scurried for cover to the nearest pool.

And so it went.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sprinting from one hot spring to another until we came to the last one of the day.  Divided into three sections, each about the length and width of a bathtub, Diane and I chose adjacent pools.  As we stretched out, we discovered that the water was only a few inches deep, so our entire torsos were completely exposed to the air. 

We sat up and struggled to reposition ourselves to find some cover.  A moment later, a man in a deep pool next to ours who had witnessed our thrashing, floated over to us, stuck his foot out of the water and pointed at it.  It took only a moment to realize that Diane and I were lying in the footbaths—a fitting end, I suppose, to an altogether much too naked and humiliating day.

 Please visit my website www.joannhornak.com where you can sign up to win a free copy of my second novel, A Delicate Bond.

Three Cheers for the Plague

            For those of you planning your first trip to the developing world, you will undoubtedly be advised by a well-meaning healthcare professional to visit the International Travelers Clinic.  Here is my advice.  Don’t do it.  Trust me, when it comes to tropical diseases, ignorance is bliss.

At the clinic, I was deluged with inoculations, pills and warnings about the many health hazards awaiting me should I be so foolish in Tanzania, as to perhaps, eat something, drink water, go swimming, have sex or be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which in the developing world, is just about anywhere, anytime.

I left the clinic loaded down with paperwork about "health precautions" and "disease risk summaries" for East Africa that I made the mistake of actually reading.

Diseases carried by insects included yellow fever, which is endemic, dengue fever, and trypanosomiasis or African sleeping sickness, caused by the bite of a tsetse fly and fatal if left untreated. I made a mental note to pack a few more long-sleeved shirts.

Next was filariasis, something I'd never heard of, which is "prevalent" in East Africa, not a good sign. Also listed was leishmaniasis, both "cutaneous" and "visceral." While I was completely unfamiliar with leishmaniasis, I was equally concerned that I didn’t know what cutaneous or visceral meant.

Onchocerciasis or river blindness is “epidemic” in parts of East Africa. No problem, I just wouldn't plunge into any rivers. But then I learned that just being near flowing water is all it takes if one is unlucky enough to be bitten by an infected female black fly. I decided I would do well to avoid rivers and streams.

The food and waterborne illnesses category was also disturbing. The fact that the food and waterborne diseases were all "highly endemic" was not comforting in the least, since there was an excellent chance in the coming year that I would be eating food and drinking water. These included the "usual" diarrheal diseases, giardiasis, typhoid fever, cholera, viral hepatitis and something called echinococcosis. To be helpful, the handout explained that echinococcosis is also known as hydatid disease. Of course, the famous hydatid disease, that certainly clarified things.

Then I came to malaria. I remember thinking that malaria wouldn't be so bad to catch but then I learned that it’s a leading cause of death in Africa and kills roughly one million people each year worldwide. Malaria turned out to be nothing to trifle with, which is why I decided to spend $400 on mefloquine despite anecdotal warnings of side effects such as "debilitating neuropsychiatric adverse events" and "suicidal ideations". 

Dracunculiasis was next. Described as "widespread", I immediately wondered how something I'd never heard, something that no doubt involved vampire bats sucking on the necks of unwitting foreigners, could possibly be "widespread?"  I didn't want to think about it so I moved on, but I wasn't quite through with the medieval diseases.

The next disease jumped off the page at me, "plague." Wait a minute. This couldn't actually be The Plague, the kind carried by infected rats, causing inflamed armpits and groins, with corpses hauled away by the cartload by toothless, hunchbacked men through dark alleys to nameless mass graves, could it? Is it possible the travel doctors at the clinic threw this one in as a sick joke?

The plague is a bacterial infection, cured by antibiotics if caught early, but somehow this disease sounded the worst. Imagine calling home:

"Hi Mom. Oh yeah, things are just great here in Tanzania except, well, I have, um…I have the plague."

I'd never live it down. My fifteen minutes of fame would never end. I'd inspire dread and repulse every person I'd ever meet for the rest of my life. Forevermore I'd be known as the person who'd had the Black Death and lived.

The final catchall category, "other hazards", as if enough hadn't already been mentioned, included HIV, measles, leprosy, elephantiasis, diphtheria, polio, influenza, parasitic worm infections, meningococcal meningitis, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis and trachoma.

Good Lord, what sort of Dark Ages nightmare was I plunging myself into?

Grasping for any faint ray of light at the end of a long, dark, disease-ridden tunnel, I took great reassurance in the fact that I didn’t see the Ebola virus listed anywhere. Besides, I'd already sold my house and taken a one-year leave of absence from my job so it was too late to back out of my volunteer commitment.

So in the spirit of fearless explorer Dr. David Livingston, I gambled away any hope for longevity and got on the plane.  But little did I know that I was to learn of yet another disease that was missing from the reams of paperwork I'd scrutinized before leaving.

The third day in country, our group of thirteen volunteers, eleven Americans, one Brit and one Canadian, still dazed from jet lag, attended a health lecture given by a Tanzanian doctor.  Much of the talk concerned malaria and the other diseases I’d already read about, but then the doctor’s talk shifted to what I’d previously believed to be a mundane subject, washing clothes.

The doctor explained that when washed clothes are hung outside to dry, something I would likely do since clothes dryers in Tanzania are mighty scarce and I hadn't brought enough clean clothes to last for 365 days, then, something very bad happens. An insect, never specifically identified, lays eggs inside the clothes. When the clothes are worn, the larva burrows into your skin and forms pus-filled pustules that can ulcerate and become gangrenous at which point that exceedingly unlucky body part falls off or rots away until amputated.

As Dr. Doom was describing this little journey through pestilence and perdition, I looked around the room. Our thirteen faces had changed from masks of polite boredom to utter horror. So assuming I didn't catch a fatal illness, which was suddenly looking quite attractive, the best I could hope for was to return home a hideously pockmarked shell of my former self.

 The doctor kept talking but I was no longer listening. I was thinking about catching the next flight home. But then, almost as an afterthought, he waited until the end of his lecture to tell us that simply ironing clothes kills the little wadudus (bugs) dead. I bought an iron within the hour.

As the year turned out, I had never been healthier, succumbing to just one case of the common cold, certainly nothing to call home about. Perhaps just one bout of the plague wouldn't have been so bad after all? 

Ode to Tanzanian Transportation

If you've ever had the unique pleasure of taking public transportation in Africa, you will appreciate this first (and so far only) attempt at poetry, based upon the most horrific 10-hour bus ride I ever experienced.

For journeys to places remote and afar

            Lushoto, Iringa, Dodoma and Dar

It's a motor coach or passenger bus you will need

But there's anguish and suffering ahead so take heed

If you see "express" or "luxury" as part of the name

Beware for it's just part of an elaborate game

They doth protest too much, here's a word to the wise

Be prepared in advance know their tricks and their lies

If the coach is "express" it means a stop every minute

If the bus is a "luxury" there’re three hundred passengers in it

There is no timetable, the prices they refuse to relate

Your ability to haggle will settle the rate

If they tell you the bus will leave straightaway

You'll sit there for hours they don't mind the delay

If they promise the bus will arrive at seven

You have just as much chance you'll turn up in heaven

If the bench will fit two they'll squeeze in some more

And suddenly your seat is now perfect for four 

It's the typical journey I've described thus far

But the trip I took yesterday was pure misery from Dar

I sat next to a man in business attire 

I had no notion, no clue my situation was dire

It struck without warning like a nighttime criminal

This was nothing imagined, not close to subliminal

My senses assaulted I needed to heave

Oh my God this man reeks, I just want to leave

With unwashed body, his whiff steadily wafted

Against my will and my wishes my lungs continually quaffed it

For relief my head hung out the window for hours

My body contorted, my mind filled with sorrows

I stewed and simmered in the man's sickening smell

Light a candle for me for I'm surely in hell

The Pare Mountains like a blanket folded over the land

The green sisal spiked out o’ the red sand

Snow-capped Kili in the distance behind billowing cloud

Obscured almost hidden as if covered by shroud

But the beautiful scenery graced not my eye

For the only thought in my head was “I hope that I die”

The trip went on and on and into the night

The blackness outside was a mind-numbing sight

They could strap me to the roof, it'd be better up there

At least there'd be stars and the moon and fresh air

The man left at Moshi an hour before my trip ended 

But his presence prolonged, the aroma suspended

And then it was over I had somehow come through

I looked at the world as if it were new

And if I should expire with a blemish on my soul

Whether it's now in my youth or when I'm quite old

I'll go to my death without trepidation or fear

Because I know Dante's hell, it's called luxury here   

The Hair Saloon or Ali’s Magic

           I've been at war with my hair ever since childhood.  Fiber optics uses cable thicker than my hair.  Even on the best of days with top-of-the-line salon products, my shoulder-length bottle-blonde do resembles wilted hay.  I don’t have bad hair days.  I have a bad hair life.  But, the life-long battle with my locks escalated to the global thermal nuclear level the year I volunteered in Tanzania.

            When I first walked through my new neighborhood in Tanzania, one of the poorest in Arusha, I was surprised to see a building, more like a ramshackle hut with a corrugated tin roof that advertised itself as the “International Hair Cutting Saloon.” At first I thought “saloon” was a simple spelling mistake, but I soon discovered that there were “hair saloons” all over Arusha.

            What could this mean?  And why did the hair saloon in my neighborhood advertise itself as “international?” Could I expect to see jet setters flying into town to get their hair styled while swilling mugs of cold beer or downing shots of whisky?  Like the Wild Wild West would there be gunfights over saloon girls who doubled as hair stylists?

            Every day on the way to my volunteer job I walked by The International Hair Cutting Saloon.  I’d strain to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside this curious establishment but was sorely disappointed.  Nothing ever happened.  I never saw a single customer exit or enter the entire year.  Even the mangy dogs lying in front of the saloon day after day didn't do anything.  They didn't move when a car drove by or when a person approached them on foot.  It was as if the wards of all the animal hospitals in the world got together their most hopeless and unhealthy dogs and released them here to live out their lives in front of the hair saloon.  I imagined Humane Society officials visiting Arusha, bursting into tears and then falling into a deep depression at the sight of these pitiful creatures.

            As the months went on the hard water, equatorial sun and lack of conditioning had reduced my hair to a state of disaster.  My split ends had reached stratospheric levels, nearly to my scalp, which unfortunately had done nothing to add volume.  I could no longer ignore the state of my tresses that were now the consistency of corn husks.  But The International Hair Cutting Saloon was certainly nothing like the chic salons I was used to visiting in the States.

            And then I heard of Ali, the self-proclaimed “European trained hair stylist.” I had yet to secure an appointment with Ali, who was apparently famous in the way of Cher and Madonna, by first name only, as he was booked up for weeks at a time.

            I soon learned that Ali, who was of Indian descent but had grown up in Tanzania, was infamous not just in the town of Arusha, but throughout Tanzania among the ex-pats.  Shortly before seeing him I’d met some American missionaries who worked several hundred kilometers south of Arusha.  They were in town to buy supplies, eat pizza and get haircuts.

            “Are you going to Ali?” I asked them.

            “Who else?” they answered.

            “What is he like?” I asked.  “Is he good?”

            “He’s okay but a bit of a character,” said one of the female missionaries. “You’ll see.”

            By the time the day for my appointment had finally arrived, I was so panicked I almost backed out.  I’ve always been nervous when trying a new hairdresser, but I especially anxious about getting my hair cut in a developing country by a “bit of a character.”

            Ali looked like the type of stylist one might see in a horror movie about hair salons.  He had unruly tufts of black hair jutting out at all angles from his head, an intense, somewhat maniacal gaze and was wielding a large pair of cutting shears.  He took one look at my hair and practically fainted.  Naturally, the subject of conditioning came up. 

            “Castor oil,” said Ali as he began cutting my hair. “That’s the key.”

            I looked confused.

            “You know, the stuff that makes you shit,” he added.

            “Oh right.  How much do I use?”

            “One teaspoon,” said Ali.  “Or one tablespoon.  And you mix it with olive oil, the same amount.”

            “All right,” I replied feeling anything but.

            “But for God’s sake don’t use too much or you’ll never get it out!”

            “So, is it a teaspoon or a tablespoon each of castor and olive oil?”

            “That’s what I said,” Ali replied, sounding perturbed.

            Ali snipped away in silence for several moments.  Maybe I should’ve gotten up the nerve to try the International Hair Cutting Saloon after all?

            “And, about twenty minutes before rinsing, put an egg on your hair,” he added.

            “A whole egg?”

            “Absolutely.”

            “Why an egg?”

            “It will help get the oil out,” he said.

            It sounded like I might have to have my head shaved if this didn't work but then again, Ali seemed to be taking care of that already with his furious clipping.  With no mirror to see what was going on, I could only judge how much hair he was chopping off by the increasingly large mounds of it piling up on the floor.

            “Or, just use egg whites,” Ali said.  “And take a lemon with you into the shower and squirt that on your hair too, that will really help to rinse it out.”

            How about if I add some romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese and a few croutons while I’m at it Ali?

            I left with far less hair than I’d arrived, but the haircut itself was decent enough.  Although I had six months left in Tanzania I never was brave enough to try Ali’s hair conditioning recipe.  But if anyone reading this is, I recommend that you hold the anchovies.