My life as Maria in the Sound of Music...

October 10, 2009
A little background: The girls have this hair dye/bleach stuff that they use to “lighten” the color of their black hair. Essentially, it makes their hair have red highlights. Well, at school last week, the principal told the students that he didn’t want to see any red in their hair (understand, this red was incredibly faint. How he even noticed, I don’t know!) because BLACK hair is the national color of Nepal, and red hair is for countries like America (great, right?!).

Well, Manisha had the most red in her hair of the girls, and this weekend she decided to fix it. By using pen ink. And the boys decided to help her! While I was talking with some of the girls in my room, the boys were liberally applying black fountain pen ink to her hair straight from the jar, and laughing as the color ran down her skin. Their reasoning: “Oh Manisha, it will wash off! Just let us finish your hair!” So, afterwards she goes to wash her hands and face, only to find that it won’t come off. At all.

So a distraught Manisha flies into my room, with black hands and a black face, saying, “Sister! What can I do to get this off?! If Auntie sees me, I will be in so much trouble! And if it’s not gone by school tomorrow, I’ll really be in trouble!” In shock, I said, “What in the world were you doing?!” And a long tale of how the boys “helped” her tumbled from her mouth. I sent her into my bathroom, and had her try to use Purell and hand-soap to scrub the ink off her skin with an old tooth brush (I had no idea what to use to remove pen ink!). About 45 minutes later, she came out, skin back to a slightly darker shade of brown than usual, but not noticeable unless you were looking for it.

Problem being: there was still ink in her hair. So, off she scurried to the girls’ bathroom, and I gave her some shampoo, the Purell, and hand-soap, and told her to use all three to try to get the excess ink out. She spent probably another 30 minutes in there scrubbing her hair, and finally she emerged, black hair without a trace of red, and brown skin without a trace of black. Relieved, she tiptoed back into my room to return all 3 bottles, and we all agreed that she looked “normal” once more! It reminded me of the scene where Liesl climbs into Maria's window, soaking wet, and has to dry off in there before going back to bed :). Insert pen ink for rain and the stories are practically identical!