Kenyata market and Passover

We were in the market to watch Jonah DJ at a “Record Store Day” event. It was a really neat mix of locals and foreigners. Two rows of stalls were dedicated to barbeque places. Staff were wearing the tell-tale medical style white coats, offering “nyama choma” of beef, goat, and chicken.

As we walked around, people were friendly. There were rows of the market dedicated to hair braids for women, other sections had tailors or home decorations.

Judah got his hair cut at the Kenyata Market. The barber seemed confident so we sat down. After a few passes of the clippers, I started to realize that this man had never cut white people’s hair before. I asked, “you’re going to use scissors for the top, right?”, which he easily agreed to. But, he needed to walk down the market aisle to borrow a pair of scissors. He obviously has a lot of hair cutting skill, but having never encountered white hair before, didn’t really know what to do with the scissors. The woman who lent him the scissors came over to show him the technique.

During all this, it was fairly quiet in the shop. A man came by waiting to get his head shaved. He was curious about us white folks and started asking all sorts of questions. He wanted to know if we were part of a tribe. I explained that Indigenous folks in Canada have tribes, but we aren’t part of a tribe. After he translated this to the others in the barber stall, they all laughed their heads off. No tribe!! I told him Judah’s lineage, with grandparents from Russia, Czech republic, Hungary, Romania, Isreal/Palestine and more. He was astounded by the idea of having so many blood lines. Another round of laughter!

Judah’s hair turned out pretty well. It required a lot of coaching from Susanna, but the barber prevailed. We paid twice the price I should have ($10), but we agreed to that because we knew it was going to take him some work! Lol.

The first night of Passover was at East Africa's only synagogue. The second night was at Jonah and Jaclyn's house.Read more