Dead men tell no tales, but weaves do

By TONY MASIKONDE

For a very long time a majority of men have not had anything good to say about the weaves. Even as our sisters seem to be in an all-out competition on who sports the longest and most ludicrous weave set, the men have maintained healthy contempt of the weaves. And from the looks of things the chickens are coming home to roost.

Headache

Last week when an item on weaves was aired by a local TV channel, my pal Frao called me right away. “Brother, have you seen?” he asked excitedly. “What did I miss? Were you on TV or something?” I asked.

“No, that storo on weaves? Haki and the way I have been telling these girls to avoid those damn weaves”

Frao was of course referring to the story of the woman who went to an upmarket hair salon along Kenyatta Avenue, and paid a tidy sum for a human hair weave.

Two weeks later she started suffering from severe headache that would not go away. She would wake up with severe headache at night.

Flammatory

She went to a private doctor who gave her drugs for the relief of mild to moderate pain of inflammatory origin with or without fever. The medicine only worked for a few hours and then the headache would be back, worse than even before.

Desperate, she went to see a specialist who did blood tests and even a brain scan. All the tests were negative but the headache persisted, making her unable to concentrate at work and having lousy sleep.

She went back to her doctor who decided to examine her scalp, and under the beautiful weave he found worms!

The worms were burrowing into her skull. And after sending the samples to the lab they found that the hair had eggs from which the worms had hatched.

The doctor told her that the hair was probably from a corpse because those worms are usually found on dead bodies.

I was dismayed, but Frao’s near celebratory tone worried me. “Remember the other day I told Stacy to stay natural and avoid the weaves?”

“Was I there?” I asked, not too sure. The problem with Frao is that he always assumes we were together even when he has been up to no good. And whenever he gets busted by one of his numerous mistresses, he will always attempt an impossible alibi, one that often leads to making a bad situation worse. So I have been keeping him on a short leash just to remind him, I don’t offer blanket cover for all his lies.

“Come on, we were with you the day, she came tagging along a university boy who could have been mistaken for her son”

“Yes, I do remember?” I quickly gave in even though I could not exactly remember the setting but going by the trajectory of the description, that conversation was approaching treacherous grounds. With my memsahib in the car, I was too sure how loud my phablet was. It would be disastrous if she could hear the ‘slime‘ coming out of Frao’s mouth.

Horses

“She called me unprintables, when I told her she looks more beautiful in her short natural hair.”

I had heard that rumour of the weaves coming from dead women but she would not listen to me, Frao continued. “Tell her to visit a doctor as soon as possible, or else she may ‘wake up dead one day,”

To the best of my recollection Frao had just mentioned weaves from horses; I had not heard him talk about the human hair, but trust Frao to make political capital of current events just as our politicians.

Though like him I detest the weaves, Frao’s hatred of weaves has definitely been injected with more venom with the latest controversy.