Owlhavens in Ethiopia: Friday morning

Friday morning found me fussing over hair. Our agency had arranged for us to meet with our girls’ uncle who had traveled all the way from Harar to meet us, and I wanted them to look nice. But the meeting time — 9:30 AM — had me in a bit of a time crunch. Now with four Ethiopian girls, hair dominates my life in a whole new way.

A couple evenings earlier, three of my girls ALL decided they wanted their hair done and proceeded to unbraid–at 8 PM, no less. I had a moment of pure panic at the sight of three heads of hair all loose at once, and so close to bedtime. The younger of our new girls has soft, loosely curled hair like my little girls — a familiar challenge. My older daughter has very thick hair with a tighter curl and a crisper texture.

That evening I did puff ponytails on the younger two, and set to work on my older daughter’s hair with some uncertainty. It took me an hour and a half to come up with 10 cornrows. The cornrows were a little wide, and looser than an expert would do. But I was pleased to discover that the thickness of her hair makes my cornrows look better than they ever do on my little girls’ thin hair.

The style looked good for a couple days, but she really needed smaller, tighter braids. By Friday morning, her cornrows were already a little fuzzy. I wished I had time to give her a new do. But once I got quick two-braid styles on the younger 3, all I had time to do for her was to gel back the fly-aways and promise we would have their friends at Layla do some nice cornrows before the going-away party this afternoon.

The meeting with the uncle went well. He seemed to be a very kind man who genuinely cares and wants the girls to suceeed in life. He has pictures from when the girls were little -hooray!- and plans to send us copies. I brought some pictures of the girls and of the rest of our family which he seemed pleased to get. The goodbye was tough, but the very kind AAI social worker helped the girls through it.

After that we were off to get the girls’ hair braided. Several of the older girls there are experts. In a little over an hour, our 11, 9, and 5 year olds all had really nice cornrows. My 5 year old was less than pleased with the experience. She finds my loose cornrows much more comfortable than the lovely crisp ones that were produced by the Layla House experts.

Previous portions of this story
Sunday and Monday
Tuesday
Tuesday(later)
Owlhavens in Ethiopia: Wednesday
Owlhavens in Ethiopia: Thursday (earlier)
Owlhavens in Ethiopia: Thursday (later)

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