The Kenyan salons are known to be hubs for the latest gossip. While having your hair done is usually the main business, you leave with more than that.
The salon ladies feed you with so much information and you can’t help but listen unless you had your earphones. You try to concentrate on following a program on TV but they are louder than the TV and you can hardly hear anything.
They are like some meeting point for all the women in the neighborhood or a collection center for chama contributions. After every five minutes, there is a new face coming in and another going out.
The women discuss a variety of topics, ranging from serious topics such as politics to mundane ones such as the foods their children can’t handle. It’s also interesting how they turn every topic into a laughing matter including weightier issues such as divorce.
They don’t even seem to care whether you understand the language they are using or not. They openly discuss about a certain Mama Wambu unconcerned that she might actually be your friend or relative. And it’s interesting how much they know her.
They know that she fought last night with her husband, that her birth control method bounced and she tried to procure an abortion and that the baby she is expecting in not her hubby’s.
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It’s in these salons that you get to know that your pastor is not as holy as you thought he is. That he has been secretly hanging out with the chairman’s wife in some pub. By the time you leave that door, you will know all the men who suffer from erectile dysfunctions, those that have been ‘kaliwaad chapoo’ and those with tens of baby mamas.
One second, they will be tarnishing someone’s names like black devils and the next moment they are angels sent straight from heaven. They talk of how faithful God has been to them and how blessed they are before embarking on how they are going to dig money from their husbands.
At some moment, the salon lady is caught up in some delirious laughter and she momentarily forgets that she had a client. As they all join in laughter, they make you part of it and one of them is already hi-fiving you for heavens knows what.
By the time you are leaving, your head feels like the stomach of a teenager during the school’s visiting day.
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