Blind Aisha earns a living through plaiting hair

By Solomon Muleyi

I call Aisha one chilly morning to ask for an appointment. She, in a husky just-slid-out-of-bed tone, informs me that she is busy.

I suggest another day to counter her remark but she goes on and on about errands she has to run for her saloon.

About a client she has to meet in Jinja, another in Seguku and several other places she has to meet clients on the days I’m counter-suggesting.

This, of course, sets me on a wondering frenzy. How can a blind woman have so much work? Heck, how does she even make the hordes of clients she talks about trust her with their hair, or heads for that matter?

Doesn’t she burn their scalps?  Anyways, she realizes, through the ceaseless suggestions that I’m probably desperate.
Or at least she believes so, and that’s why she decides to take a day off, a Friday to be precise. 

We meet in Nsambya Kirombe estate off Nabutiti road at her saloon. Her direction! The sister, Nanyonjo Yasmine, picks me and leads me through a muddy path and onto a bridge before reaching the saloon.

 It lies a few feet away from the drainage channel that separates Nsambya from Nabutiti.

We find Aisha Bahaati sited on a plastic stool near one of the gigantic mirrors in the room they use as a saloon.

She has in her hands, a baby, presumably six months old and she is helping her to a bottle of milk when she notices, somehow, that I have entered and proceeds to call me by name when welcoming me.

She is happy. I see this because her brown face is vibrantly suggesting so when she smiles, talking to me from beneath the constant flickers of her eyelids.

She blinks, yes, but she doesn’t see anything when she opens her eyes. They are painted in a dull whitish-grey haze, those eyes.

Yet with no sight, she plaits hair with such adroitness and experience. With a clientele of more than 15 people on a weekly basis, she is surely trudging a decent economic life for a blind person.

Because, according to a survey termed Disability in Africa that was carried out by the African Studies Centre, a vast majority of Africans with disabilities are excluded from schools and opportunities for work, virtually guaranteeing that they live as the poorest of the poor.

School enrolment for the disabled is estimated at no more than 5-10 percent and as many as 70-80 percent of working age people with disabilities like blindness are unemployed. The social stigma associated with blindness results in marginalization and isolation, often leading to begging as the sole means of survival.

But Aisha chooses to swim rather than drown in self-pity. She is a re-known hair dresser in the biggest part of Jinja and now slowly cementing her name in Kampala.

Mary Nassanga, a worker with a popular telecommunications says she was surprised at how good she was at plaiting dreads. “I was pissed when after a recommendation from a friend, I found out when we met that she was blind. But she talked me into comfort with a calm demeanor and thereafter proceeded to do a splendid job on my dreads.

A job that had me utterly astonished at how good she was so i made her a personal hair my personal hair dresser” Mary Nassanga relays.

While Monica Kitalima says she and her Auntie, Tabitha Nakirya, are accustomed to Aisha’s services because they don’t seem to find a better person they can trust with their hair.

“She is so friendly and tries to make every one comfortable with her situation unlike most saloon women. She barely gets mad and that’s why we get along pretty well because she is as good with her hands as she is with her words” says Monica.

Her journey
 

When Aisha speaks English, you will be fooled into thinking she is, at the very least, a senior six leaver. She has the normal hyper accent students from well-known schools like to throw around. Pronouncing in a showy prose and punctuating her conversation with big English words as if to assert that she is studied.  But she dropped out of school in Primary two at the age of 8 when she suffered a chicken pox attack.

“I was injected with an expired drug from Magamaga, a local health center (now defunct) in Jinja  and one of my eyes stopped functioning.” Says Aisha.

Her parents, Fatumah Kikuuno and Hassan Kikuumo were however helpful.  When they realized they couldn’t take Aisha back to school, they bought her a doll which out of boredom, she plaited all the time as the parents tried private education.

  Her sight situation unfortunately worsened because the eye that wasn’t seeing hurt her whenever it came into contact with light.

“I had to always put a hand on the eye that was affected by sunlight so I ended up pressing it deeper into the socket thus aggravating the situation.

I was therefore taken to Jinja Hospital to align the eyes but the operation failed terribly and instead, I lost my sight” Aisha recaptures, trying hard to maintain composure. 

Learning to plait

Nanyonjo Yasmine, her elder sister says she was there throughout the whole process, “It was a sad moment for all of us. But like the elder sister, I knew I had to rise to the occasion considering we were in the same age group and she was the last born of the 10 children, six boys and 4 girls.

So I helped her find and develop a passion and it turns out, plaiting the doll was her favorite.

So I established that she loved hair dressing.  It made her happy when she finally learnt the initial Zig zag style.

So every time I learnt a new hairstyle, I taught her.

Fortunately,  I enrolled for a course in cosmetology and hairdressing at Beauty tips vocational institute in Kansanga and at each stage of learning, I brought to her the knowledge and because she is naturally smart, it didn’t take long.

 She learnt everything that I, as a professional hair dresser would do yet she did it with the same adroitness and fashion.

Soon, local celebrity musicians in Jinja started flocking her place for their dreads to be plaited. They spread the word to probable customers and slowly, her clientele expanded to what it is now”
 

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Inspiration

Aisha says she was inspired by a lot of things but one moment stands out, when she learnt how to use a phone.

“My brother bought me a phone amid insults that I wouldn’t manage to operate it. But I learnt using it in 2 days and after a week, precisely the time he came back, I had learnt how to use every function on it and that showed me that I could be anything I wanted to be if I concentrated on learning,” Aisha excitedly recaptures.

Achievements

Aisha is single woman aged 19 with little history of involvement with men. But she comfortably fends for herself. “For the 7 years I have been in business (2007 to date) I don’t need a man to provide for me because my business gives me enough to dress and feed as I please.

Though, like a human being, I’m aching for a better life. So the real achievement is actually in the fame in my home district but most of all, the happiness,” Aisha said.

Challenges

Her biggest challenge is having to explain to every new customer that she can plait hair even when she is blind.

“I have learnt to approach the obvious and daily skepticism by explaining to them in a calm manner. I never get angry because I carry with me the mentality that any one wouldn’t believe a blind woman can plait hair.

But it gets to me when they resent me and sometimes bark at me” Aisha says.

Future plans

“I plan to acquire more efficient equipment and a better place where my customers can easily access saving me from the hustle of travelling to people’s places to plait their hair.”

Life lesson

All parents and members of the family should be closely attached emotionally, physically and psychologically with their disabled children.

 I was the darling of the family because I was never treated like an outcast.

That’s why I learnt to do all the domestic chores with little or most of the times, no help at all.

But most important of all, disables children should learn practical income generating skills to help them live life with no assistance from family when they become adults.
 

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