There is a parcel waiting at the office. It’s nearing the festive season, often there might be a parcel waiting in the office: A planner. A diary. A pen in a black velvet casing with a weight that can moor a boat. A bottle of scotch. A branded mug. They come with well wishes for the holidays and the New Year.
I unwrapped the parcel, it’s an electric clipper; a Philips Hair Clipper written “series 3000.” Silver and nude rubber. (I hear nude is now a colour). I stared at it. I thought Philips only made iron boxes and transistor radios – in the 70s. All the same this was an odd gift for Movember because this month we are supposed to be keeping hair not cutting it. Plus there was no note. I asked Fred, “who dropped off the parcel” and he shrugged his gaunt shoulders. An hour later my mobile shivered on my desk. The lady on the line said, “That’s our Movember gift, we would like you to try the clipper and tell us what you think.” As I thought to myself: What do I know about shavers? I have never once shaved myself. (Why does that sentence sound weird?).
The art of shaving oneself died with our fathers, a time when men wore their manhood on their sleeves. When men fixed broken iron boxes and radios and were handy around the house. Now we can’t even change a flat tyre, we stand by our cars and wait for car rescue because should – God forbid – the task crease our white cotton shirts and ruin our chances of entry into the Kingdom. Shaving seemed so grown up back then, so sexy. Just how men shaved, at the sink. With a blade. An aging towel wrapped around their waist. Their chins lathered with foam, like a black Santa Claus. And we – only boys with brittle wrist bones – sat at the feet of these men and we looked up at our father’s foamy chins as they choreographed this foaming task. Manhood enticed us.
Now we moisturise, we even know our skin type. When we forget to pack sunscreen for the coast we get our knickers in a twist, nkt! And you wonder; when did we get better than Vaseline petroleum jelly? When did we decide that our skins needed to breathe?
I told the lady on the phone that the shaver was wasted on me because I didn’t shave myself and she answered, “Oh that’s all right, you can take it to your barber and tell us what he thinks.”
Have I told you about my barber Sam? He’s a very proud, scrupulously clean, high-waist wearing Kamba man with an afro. I’ve had him for close to a decade now. I follow him wherever he goes. If he moved to Ongata Rongai and opened a small kiosk under a tree, I’d go. I didn’t take the clipper to Sam, instead I took it to a barber who has been on the grind for several decades.
I took it to one of the last barbers of Nairobi. And these men are only found in Nairobi’s downtown metropolis.
I find myself in Mfangano Street on a wet rainy morning. Nairobi’s downtown stoically grinds on under this wet downpour, treating the weather with indifference – like a lover being accorded the silent treatment. I duck in the doorway of this old barber shop with a shingle written “Karuri Salon and Kinyozi.” It’s at the junction of Sheikh Karume and Mfangano Street. My forehead is wet from the rain. Everybody turns to stare at me like I’m a black man who had stumbled into a Whites-only establishment in the dark days of colonialism. Which would be an apt analogy because Karuri Salon is as old as the hills, it opened for business just after Kenyans wrestled Kenya from the closed – fists of the white men.
It’s rundown. The first thing you see is an 80’s barber shop cliché; a poster of different hairstyles, black American hairstyles, when Eddie Murphy was considered pop culture. To the right is a massive calendar where from the top three-quarter of it is the president, in full military combat gear saluting.
The hubbub in the whole salon fizzles as I wipe my wet face and get my bearing. The chairs, with circular rings, are old. The mirrors are old. The price list pasted on the mirror, announcing that a haircut is 100 bob, is old. A hat hangs on a hook, on the wall. Next to a coat. Inside the room is a washing area, with sinks that you wouldn’t want to place your head in if they offered a remedy for a hangover. Above those sinks is a big screen brand-less TV set showing some Nigeria movie. Big women mill about saying stuff like; “Wanjiru, thabuuni wa omo ùigiitwo ha?”And “Nìkùraura mùno umùùthì.” The sound of a kettle boiling water comes from somewhere in the depths of that space. There are balls of hair on the floor. A woman lies on a bench. Maybe she’s hangover or maybe that’s her bedroom and she is yet to wake up.
At the corner of the room, against the window, sits a very old man with a big head of salt and pepper hair and snow-white sideburns. He’s wearing an old broken suit and a tie, with a knot not any bigger than a lady bird. On his feet, open sandals with socks. His eyes turn to stare at me vacantly, like the eyes of a stuffed teddy bear. I learn later that this is the Godfather, Mr. Karuri himself. The owner. He built this place using his own hands. He has come to this shop every year, six days a week for the past 50-years and he has sat at that very corner and watched his business thrive. This is how the old folk did it; they didn’t delegate, they showed up, daily and they got it done. ‘It’s not going to get done if you don’t get it done,’ seemed to be their maxim.
A barber shuffles over to me and addresses me in Kuyu, “Úhoro wã umuuthi, ukwenjwo atia umuuthi?” I’m surprised he thinks I’m Kikuyu in total disregard of my complexion and the size of my nose. I wasn’t even in a checked shirt. Still.
I tell him I want to talk. I can’t explain to him what a blog is, so I tell him I’m a journalist. I catch a brief flinch on his face, that fleeting shadow of suspicion. I tell him I’m there to celebrate the work they do and I need to talk to someone who has been doing the job for many years. He says he’s the man. I ease onto the only chair without a human being, it creaks under my weight. An arm’s length away, the Godfather ignores me, staring out the window to the rainy streets outside.
The barber is called John Kamau, 60-years of age and has been shaving for 40 of those. He’s one of the last barbers of Nairobi. He started shaving at a time when hair on a man’s face discredited his morals and values. A time when the nation was just coming out of that colonial era when men had to be clean shaven, a time when hair bespoke dirt and – worse – revolt against the regime.
He says in the 80s only two types of men had the chicks pulling power; taxi drivers and barbers. (By the way you have to read this story in a Kikuyu accent, otherwise the personality of Kamau will be lost). “We had money,” he gloats. “Women loved taxi drivers because they had cars and us because we took care of ourselves; we were neat, well-groomed and smelled good.” He calls it ‘ustaarabu’. “Tulikuwa na ustaarabu sana.” Boy, don’t I love that word ustaarabu. If words wore bow ties, this word would have a red one.
“Kama msichana alipata Kinyozi, alikuwa na starehe,” he reminisces, “ulikuwa unakula tu kanyama kila siku.” Yeah, meat has always been big then, I guess. Not shisha. Or fish fingers. Men bought women meat. And drove them in a car. Goodness, now we literally have to look like Idris Elba and spend like a black rapper. Talking of cars; I’d kill to know how many cars were in Nairobi in 1980. And if there was a single one that was tinted. I’m fascinated by the tint on cars. When did it start and why? Does anyone know?
He said in the 80s men who shaved their beards channel O style were ladies men. I asked why and he said, because that style resembled a woman’s private parts. I was like, “What?” He said yeah, if you walked into a barber shop and you had channel O as they called it, they immediately knew you were a casanova. He actually called it “casanova” and that song by Ultimate Kaos that goes “I’m not your casanova/ Me and Romeo never been friends,” started playing in my head. I resisted tapping my feet as he spoke. In fact, his exact words: (And please read it in a half-Kikuyu accent). “Sisi tulijua hao casanova vile walinyoa ndevu kama sehemu ya kina mama.” And he said it with a straight face as I arched an eyebrow. I thought I had misinterpreted what he meant and I wanted to ask, “sehemu ipi?” just so that I can pretend that I’m so versed in swahili that I didn’t say sehemu gani.
I didn’t want to discuss that kind of thing with a 60-year old, so I asked him the most important question: why and how does one do the same job for 40-years? How does one come in the same building, the same street, and work in the same room for 40-years, shaving other men?
He talked about how the streets had changed and how people had changed with them. How there were countable cars that parked in the street at any given time and the men who stepped out of them always had a tie, or sometimes smoked a pipe. He talked about how capitalism had also brought vice to the streets, and competition and nastiness. He said how as the streets grew busier, genuine human interaction disintegrated, how people had less time for greetings and for warmth, for instance, and Nairobi became this beast right before his eyes. But that also meant, he admitted, more money in his pocket.
His reason – the nugget – for shaving for 40 years is almost disappointing; because he loves it, he says. And he’s good at it. He’s shaved people who have long died, people who married and brought their children there. He shaved people who left to go abroad and when they came back, looked for him and were overjoyed to find him there. He shaved men who fell from grace and men who rose to grace. He has shaved men who never spoke a word on the seat and men who wouldn’t shut up. Many heads of different shapes and sizes. He shaved heads that held dreams and heads with dead dreams. He shaved when men had a cut across their hairline. He shaved and paid dowry for his wife with it and later schooled his three daughters all who are now married.
I ask him if it gets boring, coming here every day and touching men’s heads. He says boredom is for those who don’t respect their work. I want to crawl under a chair for asking such a flippant question. He also said something that we all know, but that we ignore; that you can’t muster what you do if you are not consistent. That the most important thing about work is to show up. You show up on days that you don’t feel like and you shave heads. You show up on days that you are sad or broke, or distracted by domestics or when rent is due or when your team has lost a match or your heart is broken or you are fearful of your future or days that life doesn’t make sense, days filled with lemons, and days that the sun is up and it’s gorgeous, you come when it rains like it’s raining today and you work. Because people want to work with consistent people, he told me, because with consistent people you know they will always be there, even if they aren’t there physically.
I ask to see his shaver and he retrieves this old silver shaver and hands it to me like you would your newborn baby. I weigh it in my hands. It doesn’t have a brand so I ask him what brand it is and he calls out to some lady at the sink, a big lady with a tough look and asks what shaver this is and she says, a Wahl Balding. Only she doesn’t pronounce Wahl as Wahl, she says, “Wow Balding”. He says he likes it because it’s reliable. It shows up.
I hand him the Philips 3000 series shaver and he looks at it like it’s an IED and it’s about to explode. He slowly turns it over in his hands, studying it with his 80’s eye. I’m not sure if he’s wary or cynical or curious. Then he slowly plugs it in the power and it whirs hungrily like a starved engine. I ask needily, “What do you think?” Everybody in the barber shop is looking at us, convinced I’m selling shavers.
Later I ask him if I can speak to the Godfather because he didn’t have the stature of someone you just walked up to and strike a conversation with; he was regal and stately and he charged the air around him with reverence. He inspired protocol. Some form of order. The kind of guy you removed your hat to speak to. I felt inadequately dressed to even stand before him.
He looked at me and shook his head, “wazee kama hao wanapenda starehe zao,” he says, “hapendi mambo mingi.”
I took my shaver and I stepped back into 2016.
PS: The 10th Writing Masterclass is opened for registration now.
Email [email protected] and reserve a slot. It’s on 7th to 9th December.