Evolution of Sara's hair

This weekend, Sara and I were invited to go to Rita's house located in the outskirts of Lomé. Rita is one of the day workers who works on our team in the galley, and she has the enormous task of making all of the patient meals to be sent to the hospital wards-- breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Right now, with the VVF ladies, she only has to make maybe 60-70 patient meals a day, but during the months prior, she was making about 250-260 patient meals a day- not even including meals for the translators down in the wards; no easy feat by any means. I love Rita; she's just an awesome person to get to know, and, she's a fabulous dancer. Which just makes everything better.

In any case, Sara and I went over to Rita's house around noon, where she introduced us to her family and her *hilarious* mother (seriously, funniest old African lady you'll ever meet; she wouldn't stop laughing), and she cooked us a traditional African meal (which later hurt my tummy a little, but no worries). We did a whole bunch of things that day-- walked around the neighborhood, ate some Fan Ice, sat in during the children's choir practice at Rita's church, went to the market-- but the best bit ever happened right after lunch, when Rita remembered that she was supposed to do Sara's hair. She had asked a couple of days before, and apparently, to the slight disappointment of Sara, she had not forgotten. So after lunch, Rita got started braiding Sara's hair. Mere words will most definitely not suffice in this instance, so here go the pictures:


A short while after starting to braid Sara's hair, Rita realized that "white girl hair" was too thin and soft to be braided as the Africans braid their hair. Sara breathed a sigh of relief too soon, because Rita rummaged through her drawers to produce a packet of... fake hair! In a color completely different than Sara's actual hair (of course, that's just how it works). So now, not only is Sara's hair being braided, but it's also getting random highlights AND growing magically longer, all at the same time (huzzah). Talk about efficient.


At this point, I took a nap-- a result of the combination of the afternoon heat and the fact that I was already lying on Rita's mattress. I couldn't have been sleeping for all that long, but when I woke up, I woke up to this AWESOME sight. Seriously, I told you words could not express:


I'm not up-to-date on my hair-braiding technique, but I'm pretty sure that when you braid hair, it's not supposed to stick straight out from one's scalp. I'm almost positive. And, again, I may not be the most fashion-forward, but I'm pretty sure that the latest trend is not to end up looking like you're wearing the end bits of a pineapple. But whatever my logic, Rita seemed very happy with her work...


While Sara was obviously not.


And then, to top it all off, Rita decided that Sara needed to wear the head band that she'd brought with her-- you know, to make her look cooler, because she didn't already look cool enough. Sara decided that this was the best it had looked so far-- or the "best" that it was ever going to get-- so she spent the rest of the day like this:


Seriously, I have to give it up for Sara-- I don't know if I could've taken looking like pineapple-head slash Medusa slash weirdo-dreadlocked-biker-chick with such grace. She should totally get a "I-survived-getting-my-real/fake-hair-braided-by-Rita" bumper sticker.


So the moral of the story is, if a woman named Rita asks you if she can do your hair... say yes. And then invite me along to take pictures, because it's going to be legend- wait for it...