Blog Post #1 -- PP

Our first two weeks in Lusaka have been unreal. My host family is extremely welcoming, and I already feel like part of the family! Sabrina and I especially love our host siblings, Oliver and Christine. I have adjusted pretty well to the schedule and the food, and have become an expert at riding the minibus to work. Research at WaterAid is going well so far too. We’ve even gotten the chance to see some wildlife (elephants, zebras, a giraffe, and more!) over the past two weekends, which was so cool! 

For this post I decided to choose a moment that actually happened outside of the confines of the program at the Kabulonga mall. I wanted to go and get my hair cut during some down time because it was becoming a little bit too hard to manage and wash in the bucket during baths. I found a hair salon in the mall that looked pretty nice and more Western than the other smaller beauty salons I had been noticing on the side of the road. I walked in to a friendly receptionist sitting at the front and asked her first if they took walk-ins, and then if they had availability right at that moment for me to get a haircut. The woman replied, “I have to check, because we only have one or two people working here who know how to cut your kind of hair.” Taken aback on the inside, on the outside I simply replied “Okay, thank you!” and waited for her to call me to the back of the salon for my turn. I think the look on my face may have given away that I was confused and surprised. For the next thirty minutes I was deep in thought about the implications of the receptionist’s response to my questions. Never before had I been the “odd one out” in a situation like this. But, based on conversations with friends, such experiences are normal for African American women at American hair salons. 

Oftentimes, no hair dressers at full service know how to style their hair. This revelation made me think a lot about beauty standards in the US versus abroad, specifically in Africa. In the United States, the default image of beauty is generally someone who is light skinned with straight hair. On the contrary, in Zambia the majority of the population has dark skin, and beauty standards are different.  Young people grow up surrounded by images of what is deemed “beautiful”, and when these images do not line up with what you look like it can be very damaging mentally and emotionally. This experience at the Zambian salon also made me think about how a diverse country or society like America can still subtly reject certain types of people. This happens when groups are excluded from full participation in society, either consciously due to outward racism or even subconsciously, by simply having a salon that does not serve African American women. Living in Lusaka is so interesting- I have so many thoughts that I have yet to formulate! I hope to continue journaling and being observant, especially in cases like this that tell me a lot about life in America as well.