Room Service!

   In the American culture, having a business or a salon come to your home is expensive; here in West Africa, people will come to your door selling things, give you manicures and pedicures, or stop by wondering if you need some baguettes or fruit. The reason is: infrastructure.

 Instead of having to pay for utilities and maintenance on a building, they can just show up at their next client's house. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisement.  Today, someone came to pierce Christianna's ears!

   A few weeks ago Christianna fell and hit her head. In the Emergency Room (SHE'S FINE by the way) the nurse who worked with trauma cases took one look at Christianna and thought she was an American boy; not only was her hair cropped short, her ears weren't pierced.
   When a baby girl is born into an African family, her ears are pierced immediately. It's a big deal. For years Christianna has been mistaken for a young boy because her ears were not pierced.
   As soon as Mommy established the fact that Christianna was indeed a girl, the nurse offered to use her prized ear piercing kit to pierce her ears. After Christianna had examined the 'pistol' and made quite sure that it was of no immediate threat, we set a date for when the nurse could come over.

Cleaning the ear

  We noted something interesting:  the nurse asked for one of our highlighter markers to mark the place on Christianna's ear where she would pierce it.

Using the marker

  Christianna was a little nervous, but she took the 'operation' well and only winced once . . . compared to me, who couldn't stop laughing and giggling apprehensively while a professional stylist (from the States whom I knew quite well) displayed fancy earrings before me and expertly pierced my ears in her posh, well air-conditioned beauty salon.

Look at her face!

When I showed Christianna this picture she said, "Whoa, why is my ear so RED!"

Once the swelling had sufficiently gone down, Christianna showed off her new earrings to the camera.

"It hurts," she says, "it also turned red. The left ear is redder than the right ear because the nurse had a little bit of trouble with it. The gun went half way through my ear and she had to push it through the rest of the way. A little worse than the right ear. No one notices it yet; only Maryann, Aidan, Mommy, Daddy, the nurse, and Tristan know because they were there when it got pierced. I was nervous at the beginning, but not anymore. It was the second time I got my ears pierced! The first time at Wal-Mart it got infected because we forgot to clean it once."

Oops.