There's a lot going on in our world and in our families' lives right now. This post is a "light" topic, not because those things don't matter, but because sometimes I need a break from the "heavy" stuff. Enjoy if you like this sort of thing, check back next month if you don't!
If you regularly read our blog or newsletters, you may have noticed that my (Kim's) hair has changed a bit over the past two years. Let me start by saying that I've never been a person to settle on a hair cut or style. My first memory of making a conscious decision about my hair was when I was around age 7, and wanted to grow out my bangs (they would call it a fringe now, apparently). Seeing my hair constantly in my eyes was driving my dad crazy, so he told me that if I asked my mom to trim my bangs, he would take me to the mall to get my ears pierced. Deal. Hair grows, Dad! Got my first piercings, AND got rid of the bangs a few months later! (Note: NOT the last time my father bribed me with a piercing! Ask me sometime how my nose came to be pierced just before I went to college.)
Over the years, starting with a late night haircut by my junior high classmates, my hair has been short long, curly, straight(ened), highlighted, dyed, and even permed once. Most of these different styles have been DIY. One look that I always wanted to try (probably since college, during the height of Shane Claiborne's popularity) was dreadlocks. I was never able to due to being a student, resident, and then having to appear before a board to prove myself to be a qualified and professional physician in order to be "board certified." So, when I passed my board exam in 2022, dreadlocks were finally on the table.
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| Day 2 of getting my dreadlocks "crocheted" |
With age 40 rapidly approaching, more gray hair coming in every day, and no particular love of my hairstyle at the time (self-cut), I decided to go for it. About 6 months before me, another ex-pat in our community had found someone in Eldoret who was willing to do dreadlocks in caucasian hair, and so she was the "guinea pig." In September 2023, I spent 2 days in Eldoret having my 49 dreadlocks "crocheted." I went back to the same guy a few times over the next several months to touch them up, and then to a local lady in Kapsowar to have them maintained. After one full year of having others maintain my dreadlocks, I switched to self-maintainance. I haven't talked about my dreadlocks a lot unless people ask - some people probably strongly dislike them, and that's totally fine. I'm certainly not pushing them as a hairstyle that people have to love! Here are some answers to common questions:
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| After about 1.5 years, the dreadlocks had enough length to try some different styling techniques |
- WHY? I just always wanted to try it, and finally had the opportunity to do so. I wear a scrubcap almost all the time at work, so I didn't feel like my hairstyle really mattered much.
- What else is in there? My dreadlocks were just my hair, but I did use some wax to keep them compressed or "tight" especially at the roots, and occasionally something called "dread butter" which was supposed to keep the hair from getting overly dry and rough.
- Is it easier than a "normal" haircut? Not really. I knew the first year was going to be a lot of work as the dreadlocks got established, but without putting a bit of energy into it in the second year, things were getting a bit chaotic and was frizzier/fuzzier than I liked.
- Do you love them? I would say I really enjoyed having dreadlocks when I was able and willing to put the energy into them, when they were quite long and I could take time to style them in different ways. It was a fun creative outlet. However, I enjoy a lot of other fun creative outlets that also involve the use of my hands, and so choosing between dreadlock maintainance and doing other stuff (cooking, knitting, cross-stitch, playing piano) was becoming a decision that I really didn't want to keep making.
- How do you take the dreadlocks out? Well, that's not really something I explored until I had made my decision that I was finished. The options include cutting ALL the hair off, cutting a bit of the dread off at the bottom and then trying to pick the rest apart, or what I did, trimming the dreads to approximately the length I wanted for my next haircut, and then hair by hair gently pulling them out of the dread near the root end. This took a LOT of time and probably wouldn't work for someone with coarse hair, but it turns out my hair isn't very coarse at all, so it actually went pretty well. Between giving myself a haircut a few months ago (trimmed all my dreadlocks to about half their length) and ultimately removing the dreadlocks, I had about 2 gallon-sized ziplock bags of hair that I threw out! My head feels REALLY light - and small - now!
