May 28th

Failed home remedy number one. Jane and I had the brilliant idea to deep condition our hair from a homemade recipe. A recipe that we made up at home. We bought some bananas off the street, picked some avocados off the ground, and mashed it all up with some oil olive, egg, and sugar. With many fits of laughter we loaded our hair with the sticky, chunky, gooey, slimy concoction. Chunks of avocado and banana kept sliding between our fingers and off of our heads into the freshly cleaned tub with surprisingly loud splatting noises.  Looking in the mirror it appeared as though someone had emptied the contents of their stomach on my head. It may have all work out according to plan if the water in Jane’s apartment hadn’t suddenly stopped working and if it hadn’t stopped working for 5 hours. By the 3^rd hour the smell of warm egg and rotting bananas was being to make me nauseous. By the 4^th hour the mixture had melted and started to run down my neck and face in a greenish oily slime, and the white plastic bag tied around my head trying to keep the “conditioner” off Jane’s apartment had turned a concerning shade of green and had become to radiate an alarming amount of heat. So being resourcefully Zambians we tied scarves around ours heads and set off down the street to the Peace Corps Headquarters. Fifteen minutes later we arrive at the house jumped into the shower only to find that our homemade conditioner did not only fail to condition our hair it had seemed to make our hair even drier and dirtier than when we started. It took three shampoos and two intense combings to get at least the big chunks of banana and avocado out of my hair. Every time I turn my head I get the feeling that I am surrounded by rotting bananas. On the upside I learned that walking down the street with a huge scarf covering your head in Zambia can earn you the title of African Goddess by some of the locals.