BANANAS MAKE
BETTER HAIR CURLERS
It doesn’t matter if you’re in Perryville, Missouri or
in San German, Puerto Rico Murphy’s Law is
international: If you’re going to run out of hair
conditioner, you’re going to run out of hair
conditioner in a town where you can’t buy another of
your favorite brand. This is especially troubling
because there is no better place to pamper your body
into perfection than in a tiny town that closes up
shop after sunset.
Of course, Perryville doesn’t have a rustic country
inn like Parador Oasis in San German, although being
out in the Midwestern countryside is akin to being out
on the island of Puerto Rico: Rural spaces are a
couple of hours away from big city lights. (San Juan’s
2 million people are cater-cornered across the island
from San German, and Mayaguez is 30 minutes away).
Black, starry skies fill the night and nature fills
your senses, mostly because not much else goes on
after dark.
I’d spent my day beach walking with no one else in
sight at Boqueron, a colorful fishing village. And
last night I’d hung out at nearby Phosphorescent Bay
watching its remarkable aqua light show, and well, the
great Midwest and Puerto Rico may not really be so
much alike.
Because I can always find something to do at home or
in the most out-of-the-way places that I travel to,
solo travel affords me an occasional treat that rarely
happens at home: Some evenings are devoted to me,
personally.
I love it. This means a night to pluck eyebrows; a
face mask. You know, all those girly things we’ve been
conditioned to believe make us look more beautiful.
Well, anyway, they make some of us feel better about
ourselves.
A massage would have been nice, but with no
professional services available, my own neck and scalp
stroking in the form of a self-shampoo and hair
conditioning would have to suffice.
So, about that favorite hair conditioner: I was out of
it. I figured the time was right to try a natural
recipe I had recently read about in a travel magazine.
A mix of bananas and honey loads your locks with
vitamins A, B, C and potassium.
It sounds oh, so healthful.
Parador Oasis’ lovely restaurant stayed open ‘til 10
p.m., and the kitchen staff was more than happy to
offer up two bananas and a tablespoon full of honey.
No problem
In the privacy of my room, I mashed and mixed and
lopped the goop onto my hair (read: long hair), and
generally, fooled around with this wonderful smelling
blend of natural foods that should have been a
midnight snack. Interestingly enough, something
happened in the mixing process to take the stickiness
out of the honey. A benefit, no doubt, that kept my
hair from turning into a sculptural piece of glued
fiber. On the other hand, the natural fiber of the
bananas wasn’t quite so cooperative.
Today, when I think of bananas I think of fiber…that
fine, stringy, threadlike substance that adds texture
to an already textured head of hair. Funny how I never
had this perception of bananas before that night of
conditioning.
Nor at any time before that night did I think of
banana fiber as naked, soft bodied annelids. There was
something about the little black seeds in the heart of
the bananas that seemed to wind up on the very end of
each banana fiber that was tangled in my hair.
The effect in the mirror? Little worms in my tangled
hair. More little worms than even a very bad, bad
woman should have to spend the night with.
Three washings and a lot of hair combing later, most
of the banana fibers were gone. Especially after my
hair dried, the fibrous stuff brushed out pretty well.
Indeed, there were banana bits to the left of me;
banana bits to the right. Had I tried this stunt at
home in Key West, my bathroom would have been overrun
with ants. In the tropics, ants salvage anything that
even remotely suggests food, protein, sugar or the
like. In fact, it was a rather sleepless night, that
night in San German; wondering if the honey really had
disappeared without a trace. You see, every western
movie of Indian torture using ants that eat people
alive ran though my brain.
Sometimes I think the true joy of travel is the
freedom to try something we would never do at home;
the wild hair hidden in us that needs a little
conditioning every year or so on vacation; the really
stupid things we do when somebody else has to clean up
the mess.
According to the travel magazine, silky, manageable
hair can also be acquired through an avocado and sour
cream blend, if you happen to be in a country that
grows avocados, or near a restaurant or store that
sells sour cream at midnight.
It’s hard to imagine that avocados and sour cream
could produce a more sleepless night, but until I’ve
tried something once, I hesitate to recommend it to
you; natural or not.
My official recommendation? Use bananas for hair
curlers and wait until you get home to condition your
hair with that favorite manmade product.
By Barbara Bowers © 1995
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