Shaving is not one of my favourite pastimes, so I just don’t do it. And as I don’t want to have a beard I am left with a dilemma: so I visit the local barber shop once a week for the ‘clippers’. I visit the same one, every week, in the local centre. I always draw a bit of laughter and attention as I don’t think many mzungus get their haircut by locals, primarily because they are not experienced in cutting ‘mzungu hair’. But my unique situation is I don’t care, you can’t really go wrong with clippers. But today there was another customer and they were chatting away in Acholi. I was zoning out because I love the feel of getting my hair cut. And the next thing I know the barber is screaming with laughter – quite a common thing here, Acholis love to laugh. This suddenly woke me from my daze. I asked what was said and he interpreted that the other customer thinks my hair resembles pig hair, which I laughed, it was funny. The customer then came over and started to stroke my hair and continued to play with it. Can’t say I minded that either, because it felt quite nice. But then I had to come out with a very Ugandan English saying: ‘you are very stubborn!’ We all laughed.
Dan
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 