BRAYO AND ODHIS

BRAYO AND ODHIS.

Always remember to thank your barber, and your tailor.

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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.

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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