It’s a crisis. The wedding ceremony is less than 18 hours away and my hair isn’t cut yet. And there’s nobody to cut it. The original blueprints for my haircut records are held by Ba Emmẳ and Ba Chris. They’re the only barbers certified to put blade to my scalp. But they’re in Chingola. So the boys have put some money together to fly me to Ndola. From there, I am to take a cab to Chingola, where I could either
- have one of the 2 barbers cut my hair, or
- simply photocopy one of the blueprints and return to Lusaka with it, and hand it to one of the barbers in the Avondale area.
Unfortunately, we’re short of K17.00 on the total bill, so we can’t get an air ticket. The only spare money we’ve got is for shoe polish. One of the REBoLs (no names named) didn’t buy new shoes, so we need to buy polish for his shoes.
It turns out only 3 barbers in Lusaka have valid copies of my haircut records. But Sydney has another barbing gig going on tonight quite a long distance from here, where he will be putting blade to 5 groomsmen’s scalps. Some guy is getting married tomorrow and has booked Sydney for the night. Uncle Paul Blues? He’s out betting on soccer. He’s hoping Chelsea will make it to the UEFA Champions League second round. They won’t. Meanwhile, Richard is drunk.
Hang on. I think one of the REBoLs is about to ask me a dumb question, contrary to the oath that the REBoLs signed at the swearing in ceremony. Yup, even dumber than I thought: “Wong, why are we making a big fuss about your haircut? Why can’t we just get anybody to do it so that we can focus on something more important like…”
I have to quickly interject with this: “Like what, [REBoL]?” (name withheld for protection of owner’s reputation). “Do you not see that my head is not random-barber-compliant? We do not experiment with haircuts on this head, nor do we compromise on assigned haircut executor. For someone who knew me more than 3 haircuts ago, you ought to know that.”
Interjection successful. We’re back on track with our predicament.
In anticipation of this predicament, Web Guru set up a website on Tuesday to invite bids from barbers. We should have actually started reviewing the tenders about 20 minutes ago, but Guru isn’t around and he didn’t give us the password to the web portal. So, I’ll… Oh, Guru just got here. I’ll be back later, after the bid opening.
