Stories: Red does not look good on me...

Oh Henna

Going to the hammam (bathhouse) is the one of the best things to do in Morocco. It is absolutely amazing. There are usually four rooms. The first one is where you change and keep all of your stuff you aren’t directly using in the bathhouse. The next room you walk into is the coolest, the second is warmer and the last one is usually quite hot. It’s like a sauna with running water. You pick out a spot and grab a couple of buckets and go at it. The combination of the steam, hot water and sweating sheds off the first couple layers of skin with a good scrub. Trust me, after a week of not showering, you want to scrub as much off as possible. Lots of other ladies and little kids are around, everyone’s naked. It’s custom to keep on your bottoms but some choose not to. To each their own.

One day, my CBT group decided to go. All of us, together for our first hammam experience. Sounded like a party. Naked party! We grab our stuff and decide to do like the Moroccans and grab some henna and their special soap. It looks like brown goop and you mix it together with the henna and its supposed to be great for your skin and your hair. Our LCF told us that the henna soap was awesome for your hair. It really made it shine. We all added it to our hair. It was a henna party. It smelled earthy and organic. We left it in there for probably twenty minutes or so before we washed it out. We scrubbed and scrubbed until our skin was red.

It wasn’t until the next day when my host mom made a comment about my hair that I looked in the small, hand-size mirror I had brought with me. My hair was red. Like a dark, burgundy red. Like I was 40 and trying to hide grays, or high school teenager who read a lot of sci-fi. My CBT friends said that they liked it, or at least that it wasn’t “that bad”. None of the other girls had any significant difference if any at all. Their hair was darker than mine. I learn quickly. Luckily it washed out in about a month. And by washed out, I mean after about 5-6 times of actually washing my hair. You know, hygiene, its fun.

Side note: There is something that is eating me up like I am their last meal. I don’t want to count how many bites I have but they are everywhere, places that are kept covered for the majority of my time (legs, arms, etc.) Big bites. Invisible mosquitoes. Or bedbugs. I really hope they aren’t bedbugs. I keep on trying to figure it out. Until then, I will be someone’s dinner.