BRAYO AND ODHIS.
Always remember to thank your barber, and your
tailor.
********************************
On Sunday morning the only thing disturbing the hum
of the electric clipper is the music playing softly from the speakers around
Victory Modern Barber Shop and Saloon. The barber shop is empty save for Brayo
who is bent over my head and the lone cleaning lady smudging our reflections in
the mirrors as she cleans away.
My barber is my name sake. He talks to me in
English too. I like coming in before the
hustle and bustle of the day begins, before I find a queue. Around
my neck is a jungle green wrapper and I’m sitting on a plush leather cushioned swivel
chair reclined back at an angle.
Brayo shaves with calculated caressing furtive
touches, almost nonexistent. A close shave you might say. He thinks I’m a serial
womanizer and his shaving is interrupted by conversations along the lines of
women.
“So if you hit on a lady and you find out her friend
is hotter than her and you still want to hit on the friend, what do you do?” he
questions as he tilts my head back and starts on my chin.
“Have you screwed the lady?” I ask back.
“Yes, but unajua
Brayo, the friend is way hotter!” He exclaims halting his shaving and gesturing
with outstretched arms.
“Big mistake man, don’t screw the friend unless she
wants it, does she want you?”
“No man, she hasn’t shown the signs but I want that
girl, she has ass like crazy, she is just wow,” he says dreamily.
“Then don’t, capital mistake Babaa. If you still want to screw girls in this town then you don’t
want to gain a reputation as the asshole who screws friends,” I give back the sagest
answer I can think of.
Victory Modern Barber shop and Saloon start filling
up as three of the girls who work here walk in followed by a bunch of ladies,
their clients.
The silence and serenity of a lone early morning
shave is interrupted by their laughter, giggles and gossip. Soon Brayo has
finished with my chin and he is doing a cut on my hair. I’m an Afro guy.
I check myself out in the mirror after Brayo has
finished.
“Neat!” I
think.
One of the best things about the barber shop is
getting my head washed. I love the feeling of warm water trickling down my face
as I’m gently massaged. Sometimes it’s so nice I keep a straight smile on
during the wash savoring the niceness. Soap sometimes forms bubbles in my ears
and its like, hearing through a layer of sound. After finishing the wash, he
applies more than nine different kinds of cosmetics on my head and face.
“I look good.” I say to my reflection in the mirror.
“Why don’t you dye your hair? It’s starting to look
turn brown,” Brayo suggests.
I check myself in the mirror but I can’t see the
brown he is suggesting, I still think I look good, Perhaps next time, I muse to
myself as I step out.
*********************************
His back has almost attained a perfect C shape as he
sits hunched before his electric sewing machine. Odhis is soft spoken and naughty.
You’d never think him capable of the things he says when he utters the occasional
word.
Every time I go to his shop, there are always women.
Either they have come to get their clothes cut to fit, (Odhis is your best man
for this in the entire town; cutting clothes to fit without ruining them) or
those who are there to measure out materials for their Vitenges.
But Odhis never sews clothes on time, unless you sit
there harassing him and threatening to change fundis. Even when you leave the clothes for a whole month, you will
find them tucked under piles of other clothes, unsewn.
Odhis thinks I should be married and he keeps trying
to hook me up to girls I find at his shop whenever I vist.
“Unaonaje
huyu, si si anaeza kuwa bwana mzuri sana (What do you think of this one,
won't he make a nice husband?),” he says to some random girl who blushes,
giggles, and retorts back, “Wacha maneno
yako Odhis (Stop joking odhis) .”
And then he turns to me, “sasa wewe, nakupatia hapa bibi na unakataa? (Do you mean I’m giving
you a wife and you are rejecting her?)”
“Odhis
nani alikambia natafuta bibi? (Odhis who told you I’m
looking for a wife?)
“Lakini si
wewe ni kijana, na uko na kazi, tena unataka nini? Ama niende kwetu nikuletee
kasichana kazuri kama hutaki hawa wa town?” (But you are a young man who
has a job, what else do you want? Or should I go home and bring you a nice girl
if you do not want these town girls?)” He halts sewing as his machine whines to
a halt and looks up.
“Sijui
nyinyi vijana wa siku hizi mntaka nini, (I don’t know what the
generation of today wants)” he
shrugs.
So I change the conversation back to the clothes I
left here two weeks ago. Odhis makes the clothes fit on my body since I can
never find perfect fit clothes, and I like fitting clothes.
The clothes are sewn as I sit in uncomfortable
silence glaring at the lady Odhis just tried to introduce me to. She is not my
type.
Ends
