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Real hairdressers of Zimbabwe

Thursday August 18 2016
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Book cover of The Hairdresser of Harare (2010) by Tendai Huchu. PHOTO | COURTESY

Sisi Vimbai is a single mother and the self-described best stylist at a top hair salon in Harare. With her services in great demand, she has become something of a prima donna. But all of that changes when a male hairdresser is hired.

Dumisani is good-looking, suave-talking and an extremely talented hairdresser. With her job situation looking shaky, and a young child to take care of, Vimbai tries to win over Dumisani instead of fighting him.

Not long after, Vimbai and Dumi quit their jobs and set up their own hair saloon.

But Vimbai, the story’s narrator, knew “there was something not quite right about Dumi,” but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She should have smelled a rat when Dumi took her to his brother’s wedding and presented her to his family as his “girlfriend,” even though they had never been intimate.

Instead, she is pleased that his wealthy family have taken to her.

The Hairdresser of Harare (2010) is Tendai Huchu’s first novel. In this light-hearted, contemporary book, Huchu, 34, plunges into the reality of life in Zimbabwe as experienced by two friends. He questions the status quo of relationships, and the socio-political context of the country.

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There is an enormous divide between the elite — who can buy their way through anything — and ordinary people like hairdressers, who are subject to corruption at every turn.

We see Vimbai buying sugar on the black market and waiting ages for the kombi mini-buses that crawl along during the rush hour commute to save on scarce petrol.

Colonial hang-ups still remain decades after Zimbabwe’s Independence. Vimbai’s idea of top service is for the customer to leave feeling like a white woman. In a pragmatic sort of way, she is biased towards younger customers, “since the country’s average life expectancy was thirty-seven.”

The political regime and a ruined national economy are always lurking in the background.

Yet Vimbai talks of the moments of joy she finds in shop-talk and preposterous incidents that happen in the salon.

Inevitably, Vimbai discovers the true story of Dumi’s life, and here she comes off as a little naïve for not having figured it out sooner.

However, she cares for Dumi and finds herself increasingly conflicted about their ambiguous relationship and her ambitions for the two of them. Huchu’s honest narrative looks at Zimbabwe in a fresh and engaging manner, which is quite different from the doom and gloom stories that are typically written about this country.

This book is an easy, quick-moving read. The language is fairly economical and uncomplicated, although there are some rather long passages of dialogue. The characters are average, but real enough that they could be from any African city where the hair salon is an integral part of town life.

Occasionally, there is evidence of Huchu’s newness as an author. A few loose ends are not fully tied up, and there are some overused expressions. One or two anomalies happen in the hair salon that demonstrate that the story is told by a man.

Nevertheless, The Hairdresser has received wide commendation, has been translated into several languages, and was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2014.

Although Huchu lives in Scotland, he proves to be a perceptive observer of his homeland. He raises issues of social stereotypes, class division, political violence, and the intolerable hyperinflation in a narrative style that avoids becoming sanctimonious. And the gradual unscrambling of the backstory adds a sense of excitement.

It is a daring debut novel.

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