Hair washing

Last Thursday afternoon, we went out to a poor area of the city to offer hair washing and cutting to children. Trudi, the administrator at CCS, is also training to be a hairdresser, and she has been doing this regularly over the last few months - she takes several volunteers to do the hair washing, plus some of her fellow hairdressing students to do the hair cutting.

On this particular occasion, the area didn't have any running water, so we also had to take our own water. We piled up the van with water, bowls, towels, shampoo, hairbrushes, and parked up on a concrete sports area, and near a school where the visit had been arranged. Then gradually children appeared from all over the place, and the hair washing began! The children don't wash their hair very often and certainly not with shampoo and this was quite a novelty. And even though we were only washing hair in cold water, the children were clearly really enjoying the experience. And then they were offered the chance to get their hair cut too, if they wanted to. The word spread fast, and mothers also appeared with younger children.

There were 4 of us washing hair and I think we must have washed at least 10 heads each - then we ran out of water; we could have done a lot more! A good 40 children went away feeling clean and cared for - it was a very satisfying feeling and one of the most moving things I've done here. Something so simple, and something we just take for granted every day, but from the way these children reacted, you could tell that they must so rarely feel so clean and spoilt!

We're hoping to make this a weekly event from now on - visiting different poor areas in the city.