Ikemefune By Default !

Its been a minute people but with the fishes and jus getting the feeling back in my face after a harrowing 8.5 hours of having my hair braided by this Naija mama, I'm almost fully recovered to re-emerge into the blogsphere.

I got my hair braided sometime back in March and by now the braids which were once picturesque, with a sheen and all were barely holding on to my hair and some of them had stopped fighting the let's-cling-on-to-devious's-hair so the braids at times would jus anguka bila aibus so it fikad a point like the last three weeks I made sure my hair was in a mosodo coz it's one thing if they braids fall shamelessly in my digimo...it's a total differient scenario when that happens at work.
Guys, Im not even exaggerating, it had fikad a point where I'd practiced a couple of excuses ( and sad ones for that matter ) jus in case a megan or heather saw a stray braid on the floor and since we don't have a big population of mirus in the office ( 4 including me and one's a guy so that totally rules him out...the rest have perms) so all fingers , mine included will be pointed at none other than devious !!

Now the mama who does my hair is a Naija and I think I happen to have an affinity with akina Okonkwo and such coz even my mechanic is a Naija who bila aibus hits on me even when he's under the hood of my moti and all I can see of him is part of his greasy overalls and some Northstar looking shoes which are drenched in grease as well ! But what to do...Okonkwo yes I will be your wife ...but first you must fix my car so I can go to my parents and tell them what a diamond in the rough ( and literally rough ) I've found, ok ?? to which he says "na prablam madam"

I digress....

So I call the mama who does my hair and I'll jus give you a snippet of the convo:

Devious: hey Janet ( not real name coz my scalp is under her mercy

Janet: halla,who is dis

Devious: It's me ( insert real name

Janet: Oooooooohh mai sisto, awa you ( how are you)

Devious: I'm fine, hey liston..eeerr I mean listen, I need to get my hair done ASAP

Janet: Ok ok ok, my sisto I can only do yo hea on Sonday oftonoon, is dat ok ?

Devious: Sunday afternoon it is den..eer then ( dammit stop imitating the woman )

With that in mind..I figured there would be no plot for the wekeend, my energies shall be geared towards bomoaing the hea eerr hair. I see peeps undoing their braids from where they were shukwad and to me that sjus a dam waste of time, half the labour by chopping them synthetic/humain hair depending on your budget preferences to where your real hair is and start from there - and I say this coz I've seen a couple of chicas do that..bila time...moving on.....so it doesnt really take much time for me to undo my hair, wash it, then condition it and if my hair thought it had a chance of freedom by seeing some sunshine, it was sadly mistaken because I wrapped it under a kilemba coz errands had to be run and my hair is at an awkward length where even in its natural state it doesnt look cute and its at this point I say fuck afrocentricity !

Come D-day, I go over to Janets house and I see there are drastic changes or maybe improvements to the house decor...last time I was here Janet had a small TV, dont get me wrong,there's nothing wrong with a small tv..but now, there was a bigger one right next to it, with its own stand and the whole nine yards and might I add a very conspicuous christmas tree, lights and all on the left...next to the TV's.

Woman, did Martha Stewart redo your hao when she was on a crack binge or in remission of some hallucogenic drug ? nini hii ?? forget the two TV's lined together, whats with the towering christmas tree ? its ( I look at the date and month to reconfirm on my PDA tsk tsk ) June !! this glorious festive holiday passed long time ago even the Chinese with their confusing calender already had theirs...I feel an aneurysm coming and I have to stop myself. Get your hair done..be expressionless for a day or three coz of how the scalp has tightened thanks to janets fingers even though she swears by saying " Jonet don pull hea "which scares me at times coz why is she referring to herself as the third person ??

The woman is good at braiding I must admit, besides, Iget a mini face lift for the price of a hair do so I can complain on that department, the only beef I have with her is she puts Naija movies and music videos the entire time she's doing your hair. She is considerate coz she will show you the Naija movies that have english sub-titles. When I got there I found this akata mama who was getting her hair done and she looked bored out of hermind coz when I waled in as you know who would have it was watching a Naija flick and atleast me being a kenyan I can somehow understand the humor thanks to fgrowing up watching shows like Vioja Mahakamani, Tushauriane.. now Lakresia over here is befuddled by all of these but oh well ..ambience was not part of the deal !

Then the ordeal begins and the mama is old school mpaka she uses a wooden comb and it looks like the love of her life Okonkwo carved it "jos fo jonet" and I had to tell Jonet..yes Jonet to use my kichana coz quite honestly the wooden comb is a torture device and sado masochism is not my cuppa ! I can jus feel her hot pepe ( pepper) soup breath on my neck and I can imagine by now her nostrils are flaring like an enraged African water buffalo sorry toots, theres no way I'm having the wooden comb ploughing through my scalp..no way !

She stars braiding my hair and she remembers she mos enteratin her costomer ( no typos ) and she puts the first movie ( dvd kwanza ! ) and its funny how they format the movies coz the movie started and then in the middle of nowhere, commercials and music videos started showing and let me not even mention the poor sound quality ( you can almost hear the woman of the mtaa seliing yams outside the studio ) The moment when I almost thinking I've seen it all...these guy in a loud voice screams G STRING CARNIVAA !!! ( but the screen spells out carnival but when in Rome.....) EXOTIC UMEN ( women ) and then they show these mamas doing a Naija booty shake and they're in bikini bottoms with enough stretch marks to male Plamers cocoa butter manufacturers not only cringe but give them a life time supply of the stuff ! but they dont show the faces of the women coz Im guessing they would bring shame to the family and village perhaps ??

Janet being the decent woman she is grabs the remote controls and she says ( and I quote ) " dis is nonsense" and with that, the woman pressed her pudgy plausible thumb on the fast forward button and it even looked funnier seeing Naija chicks gyrating their matakos on fast forward ( x4 ) which I would asusme is the fastsest it could allow Jonet to do and you should have seen the womans face..sheer disgust ( she must be a Truphena as well where missionary position it is with her husband ) so I was laughing at what I was seeing on the tely and Jonets expression ( which looked like she had dug her teeth into some raw fufu ) and she was so not amused by thios and she was like "why you loffing. dis not funny, dis is nonsense, dats devuls work ".Devul ? I ask....

I jus wanted her to confirm what I said plus hear her say it again and she says, "yes the devulhe make dem gols dance like dat..like bad uman" uman ?? I know peeps from Central esp. butcher the language..but this woman was mass murdering the Queens language. Off with her head the queen would have said if Jonet had been in Brito back in the days when the guillotines were the preferred choice of execution.

So the events of the day repeated themselves...my hair and scalp were being pulled in all angles and I was subjected to watching movie after movie after movie and at one point when I couldn't take it no more I suggested to the mama we watch the news or something other than the damn dvds and she got kidogo defensive, shook her head and was like " ee ee you don't like de movies ?" That's besides the point woman, it's been 5 hours and then some and alI I've stared at besides the Christmas tree that wouldn't even fit on Santa Clauses reindeer is the screen with all these movies and quite frankly cultural as I am, I just can't take any more of this ( second episode of aneurysm about to happen )Jonet does not budge and we continue with now what I'm calling the "Nigerian video torture".....the Chinese's water torture has been an unproven success and people I'm here to tell you so does the Naija one !

I'd carried a book but it was kinda hard to read it with all the noise in the background from the telly and one more thing about the movies I saw..whoever was in charge of the subtitles did a poor job because at one point the sub-titles were sporadic because the characters would have a three minute convo bila sub titles and that would throw me off then I'm guessing at this point Obasanja the guy in charge would wake up or some from selling roasted yams outside and type in the sub-titles...far fetched as it may sound, it wouldn't surprise me.

A friend of mine called me and that was a good distraction from all the melee that was going on and so we're vybing on the simu and I noticed now my nywele was being vurutwad even more and the hot pepe breath could be felt in the back of my neck...now what did I do Jonet ?I vumilia and continue with the convo and I guess when Jonet couldn't take any more of my cell yapping she told me" you have to get off da phone" and me being the kichwa ngumu I had to ask why ( ouch woman that's my scalp not a freaking basket you happen to be weaving !) and she said ( again I quote ) "when you talk your head bobos" ? WHAT ? "your head bobos mai sisto"now I think I'm pretty good at deciphering and un encrypting shrubs and the likes but this word "bobo" threw me off kabisa I have the deer in headlights look...and she then yanks my hair like they were reins on a horse and directed my macho to a bubble head figurine of Micheal Vick on top of the TV." Dat bobo head toy bobos its head jos like you ! mai sisto, I'm trying to braid your hea fost so you can leave oly"I've never laughed so hard...bobo is bubble head..Jonet, mai sisto, the award for Language Butcherer goes to you - undisputedly !

Despite my request to watch something else ( whatever happened to the phrase - the customer is always right ? ) and then she instantly became the cell phone nazi in 5 nano seconds, I took it like a hard heart soldier and prayed that the woman would finish my hair soon before my brain imploded.Well, all good and bad things do come to an end and eight and a half hours later my hair was done, no braids were clinging on to the last split end of my hair or follicle from the root ...( mwedi uthaka dacayaga) ...and now there's a disgruntled horse walking around somewhere bila its beautiful tail so as to accommodate the lifestyles of people like me but what the heck, isn't that one of the reasons we're on top of the food chain ? and its with the same reasoning I eat meat ( my vegetarian friend...you know who you are..as you read this...you now know my reason for my unpledging and undying love for meat.

Now wacha I go to the store and buy me a helmet even though I do not own nor ride a motorcycle but with this flowing hair of mine..I must do a Demi Moore or Lucy Liu in Charlie's Angels when they get off the bike, remove their helmet and sashay their hair and you know there had to be a perfect breeze for the nywele to be pepeteshwad.....I know I will look odd wearing a helmet while driving my moti but who is to deny me my glorifying moment ?? I dare even the boys in blue to do so.

What God and Janet have done to my hair, no man can come between it !

PS

Oduori no more.......for now