Henna

Those of you who have been reading my blog for the past 2 years might remember the time I went to get henna (the hand-drawn type of temporary tattoo/body art that is common in this culture) and had an allergic reaction. Since then I've totally avoided it. I don't want that same reaction again or something worse.

But there are actually 2 types of henna. The one I am allergic to is made with hair dye and is actually extremely poisonous if ingested. The other is a paste made of some sort of crushed up leaves and mixed with water and there was no getting out of it yesterday.

So here I am playing with some little girls while I wait for the henna to be mixed.
Here I am with it on my fingers. It's kind of like mud. Sandy carefully wrapped the ends of my fingers (along with my fingernails) in the paste and then I had to sit for about 30 minutes waiting for it to set in. In this culture married women keep their fingers, toes and the bottoms of their feet constantly henna'd so that everyone that they meet can be sure that they are married.

Since I'm not married and since I wasn't particularly interested in having all of my fingers and especially not the bottoms of my feet blackened I insisted on having only 2 fingers, which is also culturally appropriate.
The little girls loved it too and they took all the extra pieces that fell on the ground and did their own hands. Then everyone else who came to drink coffee with us got really excited and did theirs too so it was like a big henna event with all these women holding their fingers in the air, trying to drink coffee with only the palms of their hands. It was fun!

At one point Sandy turned to me and said 'Do you have any toothpaste?' What is strange is that I was spending the night with a friend last night so I actually did have toothpaste. I find several things about this interesting: 1) I have never been asked if I have any toothpaste in my bag so that someone could borrow it for something other than brushing their teeth. 2)For some reason she actually thought that I would have toothpaste in my bag or else she wouldn't have asked. 3)I totally confirmed her suspicions and now they probably think I carry around all kinds of crazy stuff with me every day b/c who actually has an entire tube of toothpaste in their purse?!?!

She mixed the toothpaste with some sort of powder. I asked her what it was and she told me in Arabic so I still didn't actually know what it was but I figure it was probably rat poison or something equally random and strange. Then she put this liquid stuff on, I call it lighter fluid although it is clear and pink so more likely it's antifreeze. Then we put some hair gel on and that was it.

No allergic reaction this time but that's because it's from natural leaves and not poison hair dye...and now my fingers are stained black and will be for the next month...and then after it comes off of my skin I still have to wait forever for my fingernails to grow out. It's weird and strange and gross looking but they all think it's beautiful and several people today have stopped me in the street to look and comment on my henna.

This is a picture of the hair oil that they used. While I was sitting with my fingers in the air one of the women asked me if I could put this oil in my hair and I told her no. She asked why and I didn't know how to explain it but I told her it just doesn't work on white people hair, only on black people hair and she said 'so then who are these white people in the picture on the jar if they can't even use it?' No, they're not white people by American definition but they are definitely Mexican or at least some race that would NOT be using oil for their hair.