MANTALK: The man behind these looks

There are two men who are a constant in any man’s life. One is his mechanic, and the other is his barber. My mechanic and I are going through a rough patch at the moment.

Our relationship status is ‘complicated’. He’s worked on my car for many years but he continues to make many mistakes. I continue to forgive him, but it’s wearing me out.

I’ve become bitter with him and resentful, and I want to leave him but we have had some really good memories together and it’s so hard to leave because, well, what is out there anyway?

(Isn’t that how women in relationships speak?) Aren’t they all the same, these mechanics? So we are on autopilot for now, until I grow some nuts and walk away. But he’s such a man of God, such a gentle (and annoying) soul that I’m afraid if I leave him he will just pray for me and I will feel like a true sinner.

That leaves my barber who I’m compelled to pay tribute to here after so many years of service. Indulge me.

My barber is the Pied Piper of hair; when he moves salons I move with him because nobody knows my head better than Sam Dunda now of Leo Salon, Westlands.

How I met Sam? Once upon a time I had this drunk barber who would pitch up reeking of booze to cut my hair. Most Saturdays, which is the day I get my hair cut, I would have to wait for him because he’d had a heavy night the previous night.

He was a great barber for the longest time until he started getting sloppy – getting late, constantly telling me about his family woes, showing up drunk… and then the last straw was when he messed up my hairline and cut a thin painful line on my forehead – twice. So I tried Sam, who was his colleague, and I have never looked back many years later.

RESPECTFUL BARBER

Sam is probably the only person who still wears an afro hairstyle north of Limpopo. I always wonder how he sleeps with that thing on his head. Does he dress it up in a metal cage to retain its shape?

Remember the expression, “not a hair out of place?” Sam coined it. He is neat to a fault. His pants are always well pressed and he wears them almost high waist.

He isn’t one of those barbers who always want to talk politics when they shave you. He is silent. He cuts my hair and he advises me if I should reduce my beard or not. I never fear surprises when he cuts my hair because I know he knows his thing. And he never keeps me waiting.

Or tells me his cow in shags broke its leg (I fix broken bovine legs in my spare time. Good money).

When he’s done he will send me to the wash-girl, Imelda, a slim girl with a slimmer smile, who will scrub my scalp and massage my head and shoulders. Imelda knows every muscle in my neck by name.

She can tell the kind of week I’ve had my touching the muscles in my shoulder. And when my toenails start growing into my skin, Miriam, the pedicurist will do my nails because in-growing nails are so damn painful.

Miriam is a scream, and we are always jabbering away in mother tongue and laughing like monkeys. My daughter adores her. 

There are days I travel and miss my Saturday hair therapy and this means that for a whole week I will walk around with lots of hair on my chin and an itchy beard.

And it distracts me. I feel like a social castaway. Lots of hair makes me feel primal and medieval. Like you need to rub two sticks together to warm your lunch. You feel like you have broken away from a primitive tribe and even though some women might say, “Hey Biko, I like that scraggly look,” you still feel ill at ease.

So I have to find Sam. And once I find Sam he will turn me into a well-adjusted mammal again. He will scrap off the hair on my jaws and neck and he will cut off the hair on my head, and only he will know that secret of my premature balding in the middle of my head. Him and now you.

Barbers perform that vital job that we all can easily take for granted. They make us look clean. They make us look good. And we all want to look good. They give our heads shape and dignity.

And because they trim and prune our hair, they invariably frame our faces and by extension the help us retain our identity because our face is our identity.

If you want to know how delicate and almost surgical their job is, get a lousy haircut and see how many people will ask you if you joined a new church. Go ahead. People will notice a bad haircut faster than they will notice great pair of shoes.

Last year Sam won the Best Barber award at the Kenya Hair Awards (did you know they have a hair award?) This is where all hair specialists come together and are judged on their skill and he – Sam – beat hundreds of barbers from all over this nation. (Yes, my barber can beat your barber, etc.) I wasn’t surprised; he is dedicated to his job and he respects it.

Which means he respects my head and any man who respects my head (it’s not the best shaped, to be honest) deserves an award, surely.

To Sam and all those barbers out there who make us look like esquires, this is for you. Continue doing what you guys do best: constantly make us look better than we actually are.