Page 47 - Obruni In Ghana | Amber Lockridge

OBRUNI IN GHANA 45
she was merely disgusted by the inability of my scalp to withstand the steady force of her calloused and angular technique. Instead, she popped up occasionally in my peripheral vision to utter a dissatisfied clucking noise, chastise a girl in Fante and reiterate her dominance over my head for a braid or two before disappearing again.
When they reached the very top of my head, well into the darkness now, progress came to a definite halt. The snarled mass of hair that had amused me earlier had solidified into a tangled ball of hardened wax, a fact that somehow managed to startle them. They pulled and teased at it with combs; our blue madam came over to tug at it aggressively but to no avail. Jaded as I was by this point, I chuckled internally for the pure spite of it. For this, at last, was proof positive that despite my sister Ama’s assurances, and my torturer’s confident attitudes, these ladies clearly had no idea how to deal with a white woman’s hair. They had backed themselves into a corner and the sheer disaster of the results was delightful in its absurdity.