Hair woes

Aya! Hair maintenance in this country is for pain and going broke.
Having to pay over a 300k to get my hair braided makes me want to break down and cry, especially when I think I could get the same job, no, a better job done back home for a quarter of the price. But my options are few.
If I was sharp I would have learned to braid my own hair – I can’t cry over that now can I?
I chose to keep my hair chemical free because I didn’t want to go hunting in spooky zones for salons that could handle this African hair; And again, "self chemicaling" was not / is not an option.
So, when I was in Uganda I expressly implored Nicole to do an efficient job of braiding because my hair was not going to see a comb for 6 months minimum. Okay, I know that may raise eye brows but, I wash it every so often and I don’t have to suffer with dust and things of that nature.
The 6 months are up and I automatically engaged the panic gear.
Obviously people don’t undo braids without a plan, so I held that off for a month and relied on bandanas, hair bands and nice caps until a friend, in no uncertain terms asked me to "style up". Damn! Gone are the days when I could walk through Philly and not bother one bit because a) nobody knew me, b) nobody really cared, c) they probably thought it was some fashion; you know how Africans can get away with out combing – mbu fashion.
When my problems begun to glare and I was seriously convicted, I decided I would unbraid and then do nice neat dreads. Okay, so dreads are not exactly my thing but I could get away with it, right? - wrong. I locked them myself – first mistake, this style is high maintenance – twisting the locks all the time? uh uh!.
I did toots for a few days and covered up when I went to church but really that had to be temporary.

Play time was over I had to find a salon. The first place had a Gambian who was too busy to give me sufficient attention. She seemed to make up the price while we talked so that made me suspicious but I could tell she had serious potential gauging from the head I saw, so I put her on pause.
In the second place, I was greeted by a heavily made-up long nailed woman who had the “all the single ladies” kind of attitude – in the Beyonce video? with the hand movement – oh oh oh oh. Anyway she put me off.
At the third place, the lady didn’t even look up. She showed me the prices on the wall and that was it – yeah! Whatever.
Your guess may be as good as mine, no? – Anyway I went with lady number 1, something about her coming from the “motherland”.

I set the date and went to the salon but being from the “motherland” she clearly had the “lateness” disease. I waited 3 hours before she showed up; I was glad her salon was next to the library otherwise she would have had a frustrated woman on her hands.
“Eh! My friend, you are welcom-ooh!” she said the plane delayed – she was coming back from a wedding in “Alana” (Atlanta - for those of you).
She made phone calls and ladies started trickling in, within 6 hours I was done. Time went by so fast - I guess because I was entertained with the conversations that went on.
At some point the salon was an interesting representation of Africa – there was an Ivorian, a Gambian, a Nigerian, a Tanzanian and a Ugandan – yours truly of course.
The lady who braided my hair made sure every strand was locked in and for a week now I have been moving painfully around with a tight scalp and a constant look of surprise on my face – makes me look like I botoxed my forehead eeish!!