I think washing my hair is a waste of time. Actually, I think washing myself in general is a waste of time. Obviously I DO it, because it's socially required and I like feeling clean and it's nice not to have people cringe at my entry into a room, but I think it's a waste of time. I also think peeing is a waste of time, and cutting my fingernails. And that's about it. Just those things.
So the point is that I try to wash my hair as seldom as possible. When I was studying for the bar, that was every three or four days, and ditto when I was in Ethiopia. Now, what with working and the requirement of professional appearances, I end up washing it every other day, a fact that I find most annoying. Think of all the time I could save if I washed it less often. The problem is that by the third or fourth day, I need to put it up, and putting it up generally means, for me, pigtails. I have too round a face for a ponytail or whatever it is you normal-faced people do. Pigtails, or braided pigtails, are not professional. They just aren't.
I woke up several times last night in the middle of strange dreams about Southern Sudan and Liberia, and somehow I started thinking about how I only washed my hair every five or six days in Southern Sudan, and how often, in the morning, when I went over to the barrel-on-a-pole that served as our outdoor shower, there would be only a trickle of water and I would have to suspend my plans for hairwashing. I would go ask the cooks about the water. "Moya?" I would ask hopefully. "Ma-afi," they would say sadly, dragging out the aaaa sound. "Maaaaafi." No water for you.
Then I dreamed about the airport hotel in Liberia, the one that is now an overgrown ruin, and the river that runs behind it. In my dream, someone had built a new hotel next door, and there were families in canoes watching hawks and catching fish in the river, like some friends of ours did on one of the last occasions we stayed there before the war. In my dream, one person caught a six foot tall eel-like fish with a flattened beak-like mouth, and I thought it might be a duck-billed platypus because it could breath on land, and I got out my laptop to google it, sitting on the top of the cement wall by the river at the hotel across from Robertsfield.
Places are swirling strangely in my head.
So the point is that I try to wash my hair as seldom as possible. When I was studying for the bar, that was every three or four days, and ditto when I was in Ethiopia. Now, what with working and the requirement of professional appearances, I end up washing it every other day, a fact that I find most annoying. Think of all the time I could save if I washed it less often. The problem is that by the third or fourth day, I need to put it up, and putting it up generally means, for me, pigtails. I have too round a face for a ponytail or whatever it is you normal-faced people do. Pigtails, or braided pigtails, are not professional. They just aren't.
I woke up several times last night in the middle of strange dreams about Southern Sudan and Liberia, and somehow I started thinking about how I only washed my hair every five or six days in Southern Sudan, and how often, in the morning, when I went over to the barrel-on-a-pole that served as our outdoor shower, there would be only a trickle of water and I would have to suspend my plans for hairwashing. I would go ask the cooks about the water. "Moya?" I would ask hopefully. "Ma-afi," they would say sadly, dragging out the aaaa sound. "Maaaaafi." No water for you.
Then I dreamed about the airport hotel in Liberia, the one that is now an overgrown ruin, and the river that runs behind it. In my dream, someone had built a new hotel next door, and there were families in canoes watching hawks and catching fish in the river, like some friends of ours did on one of the last occasions we stayed there before the war. In my dream, one person caught a six foot tall eel-like fish with a flattened beak-like mouth, and I thought it might be a duck-billed platypus because it could breath on land, and I got out my laptop to google it, sitting on the top of the cement wall by the river at the hotel across from Robertsfield.
Places are swirling strangely in my head.
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