Braids! Courtesy of Rugi...

The adventure of Rugi braiding my hair started one Wednesday evening. Although I realized I ran a great risk in entrusting my hair to Rugi, I so love the feeling of fingers running through my hair that I was willing to put up with excessive tugging and yanking and lost hair. After Rugi completes one braid and I examine it and it feels all right so I let her continue. She’s doing itty bitty braids but claims she will finish tonight.

She finishes two more braids she says she is done for today and will finish tomorrow. “Don’t take the braids out, Binta!”

So I don’t.

The next day after school Rugi continues braiding and another girl, Ceesay, joins her, but after a few more braids they both get called away by their moms. Later that afternoon I walk over to Sini’s compound and Rugi shouts out that she wants to finish braiding my hair. Fatou Bobo, her mom, tells me not to let her because Rugi doesn’t know how to braid, she will only play. In response, Rugi whips off my headwrap to reveal her handiwork. Fatou Bobo laughs and Sini asks who braided my hair. "Rugi," I reply. 

A little later, Isatou Pippi, New Isatou and Salimatou examine my braids and exchange exclamations of horror. “Binta! Rugi wasn’t braiding, she was knotting!” “Binta! If the children want to braid your hair, do not accept!” “Binta! Refuse! Look, Rugi has tired your hair.” A frizzy strand of hair is placed before my eyes.

The three girls set to work undoing the braids. When Rugi walks by and sees them undoing her hard work I expected a tantrum, but I explained that they’d told me the braids were not correct and then shortly after that, some random child threw something that hit Rugi’s toe and made it bleed, so she became more concerned with that. Meanwhile, I convince Isatou Pippi to continue struggling with a particularly stubborn braid and not go and find a razor to cut it off, as she had suggested she do. Isatou Pippi has become the main girl in charge of hair repair—Salimatou has wandered off and New Isatou has busied herself with gathering every last loose strand of hair. I guess she wants to make sure the birds don’t get a hold of the hair and give me headaches. New Isatou instructs me to hold on to the strands she’s gathered until she determines that I’m doing a poor job of that. Then she secures the loose strands of hair to the elastic, until she realizes I’m doing a poor job of holding on to that at which point she ties the elastic with the hairs into a corner of my headwrap.

When everything’s undone, Isatou Pippi starts to braid my hair, but not the small braids, the larger ones that go against my scalp. She completes one braid and says “wait, I will finish tomorrow.” But after all this, I don’t want to wait until tomorrow so I ask Noogoi, whose real name is Adama, if she could finish and she did.

And that was the end of that adventure.