Monday In Douala: A Haircut Disaster

Well, I woke up early. In fact, I never really even slept. How can I sleep? Twelve hours earlier, I had not even the wisp of a faint idea that I would have an intimate experience with a very attractive woman. Now it has happened. Oh sure, the Hila Hotel is crawling with hookers, but I never even considered one of them. They can wear really short skirts (and they do) but far far more attractive than a short skirt is a real job. And my paramour has a real job. It's not an economic transaction--it's a fling.

Once again, I headed to the Delices for coffee and pastry breakfast in air conditioned comfort. After my nice breakfast, I bought another Paulo Coehlo book, Le Zahir. Then off to see what the Chinese Restaurant has to offer. Their soups and appies are expensive--nothing less that CFA 3000 (US$6). Oh well. I'll just have lunch today. Then I got my favorite--mabo tofu. I think they called it spicy tofu in English and Fromage Chinoise Piquante in French. But I recognized the Chinese characters. However when the mabo tofu came, I didn't recognize it. It was tofu, it was spicy, but it wasn't mabo tofu. It wasn't brown and the tofu wasn't the soft kind. It was tasty, but not quite what I wanted.

Then I headed back to the hotel and spent some time unclogging my failing air conditioner of ice. I had done laundry in the morning and the humidity, I presume, froze it all up. Now it was getting late. And I wanted a haircut. There is a place right next door to the hotel called Ballard Coiffure. I went there. It's almost literally a hole in the wall. The whole shop is about 4 square meters. Not encouraging, but how bad can it be. Then I saw the scissors--sewing scissors and not barber scissors. OK, not encouraging, but Africans can do a lot with a little. I asked how much. CFA 2500 (US$5).

I sort of explained what I wanted and then the guy started cutting my hair. But his technique was all weird. He didn't wet my hair. He fluffed it with a comb and started cutting off the parts of my hair that stick out. OK, not exactly what I call expert. Then he combed my hair on my forehead and before I could stop him made some really weird cut. I was getting exasperated. I asked him if he didn't to get my hair wet? Oh no. That wouldn't do. It wouldn't? Whenever I get a haircut, they always wet my hair. He was cutting in a weird way--he was using only his left hand and having difficulty orienting the scissors.

I told him that whenever I get a hair cut that the barber always grabs a chunk of hair between his fingers and pulls up a certain distance from my head and then cuts it flush with his fingers. Ah ha! He pretended he knew what I was saying. But he wasn't pulling my hair to the same distance and he was just sort of picking random points and not methodically moving along my head. And half the time he was cutting flush with his fingers above the fingers and half the time he was cutting below his fingers.

It was a total disaster! Complete and total. He was trying, but he definitely did not know the first thing about how to cut white hair. My hair looked like a horror movie mop. I reached into my pocket and got out CFA 2500. I gave it to him. He wanted to try to fix it. His buddy who speaks better English tried to explain it would just take some time. No. He doesn't know what he's doing--enough time is NOT the solution. They tried to convince me to sit a bit longer so they could fix it. No. I gotta go. It's past 4:30pm and I need to find someone who can fix this disaster. It was the first time I ever left in the middle of a haircut because it was just turning out disastrous.

I went to the lobby and asked the desk man for a recommendation for someone who could fix it. He didn't know but he felt sorry for me. He suggested that I go to the Akwa Palace hotel which is the top hotel in Douala--hence the top hotel in Cameroon. If anyone can hook up a white guy with a hairdresser who can fix a white hair disaster, it was them. I hailed a mototaxi and CFA 200 later I was at the Akwa Palace. They didn't have an answer for me but suggested I try the Parfait Jardin hotel.

I went there. I explained my situation to the desk man. "I just got a haircut from a guy who doesn't know how to cut straight hair." He looked at my hair, smiled, and said "yes, I can see that." He sent me down the street and I went down. There was Elite Coiffure. I entered. The girl at the counter said they could fix it. There is one hairdresser there. He was with another customer and he was really slow--just shortening the hair of a guy with almost no hair to begin with. My stress levels were getting really high. I planned to meet my fling girl and I needed this fixed.

I explained with the help of the desk girl what I needed--a repair job. I explained that I needed him to deal with the parts that were too short because the previous guy screwed up and just needed him to work with it and make something passable. He started. First thing he did was to wet my hair. That's a good sign. In the end, he did an OK job. He didn't quite know what to do with the back of my head. He tried to get my skin to blend into my hair and had a hard time. He spent a lot of time working details. Maybe if your hair is going to be short and not really move, the details are important, but I just brush and go and I ride around on moto-taxis and stuff like that. Millimeter precision is not what I'm after. It turned out about as well as it could though. An American hairdresser would have done a better job from just simply knowing how white hair works. But it was OK. This one only cost CFA 5000 (US$10). I tipped the guy CFA 500. So it was only double the disastrous haircut.

Then I moto-taxi'd back and unwound in the hotel bar with a beer and glass of red wine while I journaled and pondered my day and the day previous and the day to come.

Monday, December 1, 2008 22:27 Cameroon local time