While home in the US for my sister’s wedding I enjoyed a spa day with the bridal party. It was an intimate group, just my sister, my sister’s best friend whom we’d grown up with from our neighborhood, and me. It was the usual pre-wedding package- message, facial, manicure, and pedicure- which I did not mind one bit after a year in Burkina. I actually felt it necessary to apologize to my nail girl for the condition of my feet, which were in sad, sad shape. My sister was in the chair next to mine during our pedicures, and when it came time to choose a paint color I asked if she had anything in mind for her bridesmaids. No, do whatever you want, she said. “Just don’t pick something boring, like you always do! Like clear or something!” she says, just before I ask the lady about some neutral options. She had a point, the novelty of nail polish wore off all most as soon as it had started in my girlhood, just after Nany finally allowed me to take Dana’s and wear it. As soon as I started playing sports I could no longer be bothered with the stuff- it was always chipping off and I had to keep my nails short anyways. As for toes, well, I was just lucky to have toe nails. I went through a nail buffing stage, but upon entering Asheville School it was all I could do just to keep up with the high expectations they have for their students, and well kept nails was not one of them. To be honest, I hadn’t worn nail polish since my senior year prom, 6 years ago. After a slight panic attack as to where to begin I decided to follow my sister’s lead- what color are you picking? All three of us girls picked a deep pink color that matched the bridesmaids’ dresses, watermelon or some fuchsia-esk color.
For the rest of the vacation, I have to admit, I couldn’t help but admire my pink toes every time I looked down (She did a very good job). Every shoe looked just a little better on my foot. Every outfit just a little more put together. I felt just a little more feminine, an established adult, a real person, an American. It’s amazing how something so small, so normal, can make such a huge difference. But the real difference came when I returned to Burkina. I held on to those pink toes as long as possible, and each glance at my feet took me back to America, to boating with my family on Torch Lake, to being introduced to Josh’s life in Texas. For just a moment I was still in America, I was a normal American, or maybe just a typical ex-pat. And my feet were stained orange from a red sand beach, not a red dirt desert. The children screeching in my ears were just neighbor boys playing, not neighbor boys constantly asking for something, ready to steal from you at any time. The buzz of bleating farm animals, chickens clucking and donkeys, could just as easily be the buzz of traffic. One look at my toes and I was no longer dirty and gross, in old funky clothes, but transformed to pretty, clean clothes, that dared to show my knee, or maybe my shoulders. For just a moment I felt normal, pretty, clean. I could be anywhere in the world, not just a mud-brick house in the middle cornfields in Africa. Even Josh couldn’t help but comment on my pretty pink toes every time he saw them; so out of place in the Burkina world. And then the moment would pass and my reality would solidify; I was still in the middle of West Africa.
I remember packing for the Peace Corps- didn’t bother with any type of hair product and only the bare minimum make-up for special occasions, like swear-in. Didn’t pack any clothes I would normally where in the US, I knew everything would get ruined here. Even disregarded my one usual jewelry habit and didn’t pack any necklaces, and brought only one pair of silver stud earrings, which my grandmother had given me right before I left. Why on earth would you bring make-up and hair gel to Africa? I will admit I even scoffed at the girls who brought hair straighteners to the Peace Corps- What? Are you going to straighten your hair in village? With the current from a solar panel and car battery in your hut? Or the girls who wore make-up everyday- Seriously? Who are you trying to look good for? We’re in Burkina Faso, just taking a shower is an amazing feat. We’re constantly sweaty and dirt stained just from being. I really don’t think your eye-liner is going to make a difference here.
But now I understand. This country has a way of wearing you down. Maybe it’s not Burkina, necessarily, but this lifestyle. All your clothes are ruined- dirt stained or bleach stained or falling apart and discolored or a cheaply-made pagne has bleed on your one white shirt. Even the clothes you never wear to keep nice turn out ruined. Just walking from the shower room to the house makes my feet as sandy as if I was walking on a beach, and our courtyard is cement. No mater how are we try, the bed is always filled with sand and bugs (we have a bed net- how do they get in?!). We are always dirty, sweaty, and smelly. My hair is always knotty from wind and sweat, and I just realized I haven’t looked in a mirror in at least 3 weeks. We joke that you can pick a PCV out in a crowd of ex-pats because we will be the ones in village clothes, dirty, and look like we just come from the bush. And it’s true. It’s easy to loose your sense of self-identity here, to loose yourself, your confidence, and just melt into the surroundings. One might need to wear nail polish to feel like a normal human being, to remember there is more out there beyond the huts and millet fields. Maybe eye-liner and make-up is what one needs to feel pretty, to feel like they, the person they were before the Peace Corps, still exists, when everything else is filthy. If that’s what it takes to get through this experience, I understand, and I’m all for it. I will admit that I now have a stash of fashionable clothes in Ouaga, the make-up and hair-curl cream I needed for Texas and Paris, and now I make a point of it every time I’m in Ouaga to dress as Western as possible. Ouaga is a real city, with lots of foreigners; why shouldn’t I look like an adult American women, clean and put-together?
After a month the opportunity arose to take off the nail polish. I was at another volunteer’s site and the remover was on the table in front of me. My toes were starting to look bad anyways, but I was still sad to see them go. I briefly thought about re-painting them, but the moment had passed for painted toes. It was time. I still have to thank my sister- thanks to her I realized there is more to nail polish, and beauty products, than just vanity. And maybe I needed that here, too, to get me through the Peace Corps.
I followed the lead of my sister’s best friend, a very successful business women, and did a nude color on my finger nails. I thought it looked more professional. But now I wonder what bright pink fingers would have done for me.
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