Sunday Times

HUMOUR

Ndumiso Ngcobo’s close shave

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Human beings have been interferin­g with The Almighty’s grand design for a quarter of a million years. If we’re not piercing our tongues, we’re enlarging our mammaries. If we’re not reshaping our eyebrows, we’re chopping off our foreskins. And, in the Bible, the Koran and the Torah, we were given permission to cut off our hair as long as we didn’t shave off our sideburns and trim our beards.

This is why I’m sceptical of any man of the cloth without a beard, such as Pastor Mboro.

Hair grooming presents all of us with many headaches and conundrums. Until about three years ago, my preferred hairstyle was the good ole chiskop. Life was so much easier. If I felt stubble on my watermelon I would literally stop at the nearest makeshift tent, ask for a chiskop and stagger away reeking of methylated spirit, the universal delousing and sterilisin­g agent of choice. And then my then seven-yearold touched me on my vanity studio. He told me that I looked like a chubby, bald and old man. I said to him I’m chubby and bald by choice. Prove it, he said. And this is how it came about that I shed about 15kg and started growing hair again.

The results impressed the boss of me so much and increased the number of nocturnal scrums in my house that I decided to keep the look. My ego is stroked each time folks tell me I look younger than I did five years ago.

However, that means I can’t just choose any ole barber willy-nilly. Barbers are not at the same skill level. If you possess my kind of hair, you probably want to have a Ghanaian, Congolese or Nigerian barber. Them brothers know how to cut hair. This is not a universall­y held view, of course. A few years ago I was next in line behind an extremely particular gentleman at Paebo’s barbershop in Edenvale. Paebo is from the DRC and I guess this was the fellow’s first visit because the first thing he said was: “Angizifuni lezizintam­bo zaseCongo”

(I don’t want those thin sideburns and thin goatees). And then he spent at least two minutes describing in detail the kind of cut he desired. Most barbers have pictures of rappers and R&B stars on the wall and you simply point at either Jamie Foxx, P. Diddy or Usher as an example of what you want. No one ever points at Kanye West. But this fellow wanted to create his own. The end result made him look like an angry pimp from a ’70s Blaxploita­tion flick — complete with thin sideburns and a thin goatee. A near violent altercatio­n ensued between Paebo and Blaxploita­tion extra. Shave off all my whiskers, he barked in the end. Paebo proceeded to give him a clean shave. I was still chuckling surreptiti­ously until this point. Where I lost it is when he surveyed his mug in the mirror and in a quiet, reflective voice went: “Hawu madoda! Umlomo wami usufana nenakhunga­na yomntwana ” (My mouth looks like a baby’s nether region).

All of us have had hairstyle disasters. My 23-year-old son returned from university, his hairline backed up by at least 1.5cm after a butcher in a barber’s uniform was done with him. He looked like his face was the ocean and his hair was the shore during high tide. About two years ago I tried out an affable, Ghanaian gentleman called Augustine. But the fellow wasn’t particular­ly good. I don’t really blame him. You see, the problem is the design of my cranium. I call it the 40th Natural Wonder of the Modern World. It is a rather vast expanse with many dips, corners and crevices that end in a 90degree sharp precipice at the back, not too dissimilar to the Victoria Falls. So, the task of manicuring the lawn on my head is a rather arduous one that requires a comprehens­ive guided tour of this massive wonder.

One day I went to have my hair cut at Augustine’s. But he wasn’t there. So I went a few shops up and got a much better haircut from a human fuzzball called Adam. This is when I started cheating on Augustine with Adam. And now I was that guy taking the longest possible route to get my haircut; just to avoid Augustine. I’m happy with my new guy. This is if you ignore the fact that he’s a hectic Bible puncher who closes his barbershop during peak barbershop hours on Sunday afternoons to go to church and pray.

But the struggle continues. I recently went into Adam’s shop and he wasn’t there. But I needed a haircut pretty badly. So I allowed his cousin to do it. And he took the hair too far down and I told him. His response? He started shaving off some more.

The end result made him look like an angry pimp from a ’70s Blaxploita­tion flick

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