On my mind are the fragrances that used to converge and which increased their volume of scent as Christmas approached.
They included the hunger pang-generating aroma from the cooking chapatis, and the pungent smoke odour from the paraffin jikos which were brought back to use after resting for a whole year since the last Christmas.
This thought has been provoked by the book entitled, “Song of Lawino” by Okot p’Bitek, when the speaker says:
“When the beautiful one, with whom I share my husband, returns from cooking her hair, she resembles a chicken.”
Over and above that part of sharing the husband, my mind notes the irony that the so called beautiful one is equated to a chicken. It remembers, by the way that “Irony” is a form of literally style, just like Satire, Metaphor, Simile, and Metonymy; but that’s a story for another day.
What attracts my mind more from the above Okot p’Bitek quote are the memories of the extra fragrance that was added to the other pre-Christmas scents by the sweet balm of ‘cooking hair’, as the speaker calls it.
Anyone who cared to follow this flagrance would encounter a group of village girls who were busy “burning” one another’s long hair as they called it (as opposed to ‘cooking’ it); over a snack of updates of village manenos, which would be drowned down the throat by a cup of constant giggles.
What was unique then were the tools used to burn the hair, which included either a hot charcoal iron box or a crude hotcomb (pictured) which was made hot using a jiko.
These were the Beauty Salons of yesteryears which only legends would remember.
One must be wondering how my mind got to know these things. Thanks for asking; I thought you’d never ask.
The answer is simple, my shy self would be minding his own business; then, ghafla bin vuu, these awesome fragrances (generated from burning hair and hair-oils) would hit the nose; one footstep would lead to another until I found myself at a distant, remote, and secret vantage position, from which I could follow the full proceedings audiolly *pun intended* and visually.
The rest is history.
