Hair (fund-)raising! – by Jae

When I was 19 and travelling around the world I was about to go on a trek up into the hill tribes of Northern Thailand when a fellow traveller suggested that I should get my hair plaited. She said that she’s not found anywhere to wash her hair when she had done a similar trek, and that she wished she’d done it. Fortunately a Thai waitress in the bar we were sitting in overheard us and said she’d plait my hair for me. By the end of the evening my head was covered in neat corn rows with beads dangling and clacking as I walked back to my bamboo hut for the night. I looked the very epitome of a gap year traveller.

The trek was amazing; we were a group of eight trekking with a local lad who called himself Rambo (we called him Rambutan – which he had the grace to pretend he found funny), and another called City who ended up having to leave us when his Malaria “got worse”!! I remember one particular night when I lay awake wondering whether I should have joined in with the opium pipe that almost everyone else had partaken of (was I a wimp / prude / missing out on life’s experiences?) only to spend the whole of the next day congratulating myself as the entire group looked greener and greener and had to dash off to the bushes as we walked to empty one end or the other!

And the other thing I was pretty smug about was my hairstyle; all the girls, and a couple of the boys, had long hair and were cursing how manky it felt with its sweaty greasiness and suncreamed edges! This thought came back to me recently when I was chatting to some of my colleagues at work. It was late in the day and there were only a few of us left in the office; the lovely Gina suggested that I might want to take Batiste dry shampoo up Kili to do a quick freshen-up when my hair feels horrid. I recounted (a very little of) the tale above, finishing on the word “corn rows”. I looked around and realised the young things I was talking to were all horrified at the idea that I’d do the same thing again. How hideously uncool I’d look up a mountain with beads dangling! Eventually they all burst out laughing and I said a cheery, “bye” and dashed off to catch my train. When I checked my email 30 mins later I found this:

How brilliant are they? I completely love that they’re challenging me to do it, and tempting me further with the promise of cash into the 3G charity pot! And with our new match-funding that’ll be worth £250 to our charities – wow!

Now, where can I find the right type of hairdresser…