The other day at work, my co-worker, Fatimata, informed me that she had called someone to come into work and give me a tattoo. Then she proceeded to tell me not to be scared, it will make me look beautiful. I was a little apprehensive because here the word tattoo can be one of two things, a permanent never coming off tattoo or henna.
Fatimata had just had henna done on her hands, so I was hoping it was that. I told myself not to freak out until I saw what was going on, since I’m always just a little out of the loop with the language barrier.
So I sat, waiting for this lady to show up, anticipating what was going to happen. About 2 hours late, she shows up. She sits down next to me, grabs my hand and starts taping off sections. Once the pieces of medical tape were cut, I knew it was henna. HUGE sigh of relief!
So, she cut long strips of medical tape into thin bits and then laid down the tape on my hand, (then came the scary part) she took a straight razor and cut the tape on my hand. Now call me old fashion, but I get a little nervous whenever someone is around my skin with a straight razor so this part took forever. However, I must say she was very gentile with me; she only cut the tape (no skin!).
Traditionally henna is only done on married women, where they write the new last name of the women on her hand so everyone knows she is married. I however was told I could pull off henna even though I’m not married. My “family name” here in Mali is Keita so, keeping with tradition they wanted to spell out Keita on my hand. Now this woman was illiterate meaning she had no idea how to spell Keita or what it even should look like to write. So someone wrote it out on a piece of paper, showed it to her and then had to explain how to write it for her. This was a little nerve racking, I didn’t want Keita to become Kcltn. I few little lines makes all the difference. Thankfully things turned out well in the spelling department.
Once my hand was all taped up we spread on the henna mixture. Henna is a powder mixed with water to make a paste that after left on the skin for an hour turns the skin red. There is another step that by mixing something that looked like sugar and smelled really bad with wood ashes and water and applied will make the red henna turn black. So that is what I did. I had to sit for TWO HOURS with my left hand in a black plastic bag, one hour for the red color and another for the black. But when it all came off it looked good!
I’m writing this post about two weeks after the henna/tattoo day at work and sadly all of the henna is already gone. So don’t worry, it wasn’t a tattoo!
