A new haircut introduces us to SA ethnic categorization

So I had a very full and eventful day today, but I will tell all about that tomorrow. This blog could very easily become quite heavy, and I want to do a light-hearted post now and again.

So, the umfundisi (pastor) told me not to get any major haircuts after he had introduced me to the congregation. Didn't want they to get confused, I guess (with all of the other six foot white guys walking around the township). I assumed he was kidding, but I did need a haircut so I took care of that on Saturday.

I live at a Lutheran Youth Centre in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. South Africa, in case you weren't aware, remains a very race-conscious society and they are very concerned with fitting every person into a racial category. The people in my neighborhood are what would be called "coloured", which is a wide-ranging term including people of mixed heritage and generally a skin tone somewhere between white and black. Coloured people are often called "Cape Malays", although that is not an accurate or PC term, since few of them are actually of Malaysian descent. These folks descend from slaves that the early Dutch colonists brought in from modern day Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar, and India, plus the Khoesan who are native to the Cape Peninsula. Interestingly, the Dutch did not enslave the native African popluation, leaving that to every other European country. The coloured community is Afrikaans-speaking, and in fact the language probably orignated with coloured cooks and nannies and, ironically, caught on with the slave owners. Afrikaans is a simplified and very expressive derivative of Dutch, which was regarded as a dialect of that language until being recognized as a language all its own in the 1920s. The two languages are similar enough that native speakers could probably figure out what the other was saying. But I digress.

So I went to a salon in my neighborhood that was recommended by the manager of the youth centre. Her cousin Arison cut my hair while Natalia (also Cape Muslim despite the Russian sounding name) chatted me up (I could not understand much with her accent), and you can see the lovely result. It didn't look quite so bad before Arison blow-dried it straight (the noise of which made Natalia even harder to understand), giving me the lovely Hilary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry" look you see before you. Now, if my bangs look lopsided, it's because they are. I had to do quite a bit of touch up when I returned home, but had to take a picture beforehand to save for posterity my worst haircut ever. At least it only cost 30 rand ($4). I guess you get what you pay for.