Esta Greña: or why its hard to have this hair in azerbaijan (part 1)

When I was getting ready to come to Azerbaijan with the Peace Corps there were two things that I worried about the most: the food and my hair. (I'll discuss my rather interesting food preferences in another post.) I imagined that in the Peace Corps I would be living in a hut somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or running water. (Isn't that what most people think the Peace Corps is like?) I'm sure there are some Peace Corps posts where that is an accurate description of a PCV's life, but that is most definitely not what the Peace Corps is like in Azerbaijan. (I am typing this on my laptop, that is currently charging, and will be posting this using the wireless DSL internet in my house.)


Okay I'm digressing a bit - back to my hair. For a good portion of my life my hair has been alisado. I don't remember what my hair was like antes del alisado, but according to my kindergarten graduation picture, it was REALLY curly. When it was alisado, my hair was very easy to straighten and this is how I would wear it most of the time. My go-to hair style was a bun or ponytail since I hated wearing my hair down/suelto.

A few years ago however I stopped alisandome el pelo because I decided not only are those chemicals proooobably not the best thing to be putting on your head, but I could still straighten my hair without having an alisado. I could have the best of both worlds, curly and straight hair whenever I wanted it. In theory, this is true. While I was still in America it was very easy to switch between the two depending on my mood. My aunt owns a salon and my mother, like most (if not all) Dominican women, know how to do hair. So basically whenever I wanted straight hair all I had to do was go home so my mother or aunt could do it, and whenever I wanted curly hair I just had to wash it and let it air dry with some leave-in conditioner.

But then there was Azerbaijan. I use a lot of hair products, none of which I was sure would be available when I got to AZ. When I was packing, I thought of this and had two huge ziploc bags full of hair products. Good thing I did because there really are no good products in this country for my hair type. You know what else they don't have here? Un salon dominicano. I had my mother send me rolos y un peine so I could try to do my own hair (that's still a work in progress).

So basically this means it is very hard to get my hair straight, or curly really. Unlike 99% of the PCV's here in Azerbaijan, I can't just take a shower and let my hair air dry without putting anything in it, because guess what? It gets big, it gets frizzy, and when it does these things, people touch it, people talk about it, I get way too much attention in the street, and frankly people make assumptions about me that I am not comfortable with.

I love my hair, I just wish it was a little easier to deal with.