A Hairy Situation

Now that my family has a computer it seems like we are starting a tradition to call Cheikh, the brother who lives in Spain, every Sunday after lunch. Fortunately, today no one made me talk to him over Skype which is really hard to do, but I was a topic of conversation. When it was Khady's turn to talk I was sitting with her and my mom outside when Khady started talking about hair extensions. One of my favorite things about my family is their ability to talk about me like I'm not there. They know that I understand the vast majority of what they're saying or can at least catch the drift of a discussion so when they blatantly talk about me in front of me I find it rather amusing.

Since I arrived my family has been talking about Cheikh coming home before Tabaski, a major Muslim holiday that takes place around Thanksgiving. It appears as though this actually might happen or at the very least everyone in Senegal is starting to create a wish list of European goods. Khady's obsession is real hair extensions. She's asked me several times if I will cut off my ponytail and give it to her when I leave, which is fairly awkward, but I've been able to kind of avoid the topic. As my hair has been getting longer she's become more persistent and I've had to just tell her that I want long hair. Today she's talking to Cheikh on Skype and as I'm sitting next to her so tells Cheikh that I'm refusing to give her my hair so he absolutely must buy her real hair extensions before he comes home. I found this hilarious especially since she mentioned me multiple times.

That was the highlight of my day. Other than the lengthy discussion of hair extensions I cleaned my room and entered a war of attrition with Ahmed over the left over candy.