Girls day at the salon

Today Harmony and I went with her God Father Jack, (whom she calls Uncle Dawn) and her God-Sister Ketia to the inner city to have the girls hair done.  The salon we went to is owned and run by real African women.  In fact they don't speak more than about 10 words of English.  Jack has been to this particular salon before with Ketia so he knew the ropes.  This was Harmony and my first time.  I was a little nervous, as I didn't know what to expect, but as soon as we arrived I was quickly put at ease.  The braiders were beautiful African women who knew what they were doing.  Our braider was Matie pronounced ma tae.  Before she started she looked closely at Harmony's hair then came over to me and said that the girls have "much hair, $250 for both".  At first I hesitated then said, "I don't have that much with me".   Eventually I figured out that she meant $125 each not $250 each.  That's still expensive, but about what I expected it to be.  I said "good" and she got to work. 

Last night we took Harmony's previous style out and washed her hair.  Then we carefully combed through all of her hair and put about 6 large twists in just to keep it combed out until the next day.  This morning we got up early and met Jack and Ketia at their house.   When we took out the twists from the night before, we had this:

Then Matie combed out Harmony's hair into her full afro.  WOW, it's getting so long.  Her hair is very soft and has such a nice curl pattern.  She doesn't like it out like this, but I think it's adorable.



Here'e a picture of teh girls in the salon.  It's nothing fancy, just a small old storefront in a crowded downtown neighborhood. 

We arrived at 9:15 am and got started by 9:30am.  Here's where we were by 10:30, after 1 hour.

Harmony was doing pretty well the first hour.  That's Matie in the background.  She ws on her cell phone for most of our time there.  Of course she didn't speak much English, so it didn't really matter. 

One more hour later: 11:30am.  What Matie is doing, is pinching off small sections of Harmony's hair then adding some synthetic hair to it.  Then she starts by very tightly braiding the synthetic hair into her natural hair.  After about half an inch of braiding she twists the hair tightly.  At this point I was getting a little worried about what the final product would look like since her twists were not very long.  Later she went back and fully twisted Harmony's hair all the way out. 

Hour 3: 12:30pm.  It's getting to be a long time of sitting and pulling at hair.  Harmony is getting hungry and of course all I brought with my was gum.  Next time I'll bring snacks.  So, by the end of the 3rd hour this is what she looked like.

 By this point all of the braiding was started at her head.  Now Matie was finishing out the twists.  This next picture is at the end of hour 4, 1:30pm.  Yes, there were tears, but she did a great job over all.

When this step was finished, taking only about 20 minutes, Matie carefully trimmed up the braids to remove and loose ends, then she curled the extra synthetic hair at the very ends with rollers:

When all the ends were rolled up Matie dipped the curlers into almost boiling water.  This made me a little nervous, since Harmony can be quite wiggly, but she sat very still and we did not have any injuries, thank goodness.

When the ends of Harmony's hair had cooled and dried for alittle while, Matie took the curlers out and whaa.. laaa:

By 2:30 we were done and on our way to McDonalds.  It took a long time, was quite expensive, made my baby girl cry at times, but in the end she's happy and says that it was worth it.  Here is a picture of Harmony and her God sister Ketia on our way to McDonalds.  What beauties!