Chuukese Boys' Hair

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my experimentation with my hair since I’ve been in Chuuk. I think part of the reason that I don’t mind what my hair looks like is because I have lost all scruples for personal hairstyle. The Chuukese boys have taken hair experimentation to a whole new level. Hippies grow their hair long to show freedom, Jamaicans grow dreadlocks to solidify their oneness with nature, Emo adolescents dye their hair black and let it hang in their face to be nonconformists, punk kids will rock green Mohawks to rebel against society, but I have no explanation for the Chuukese hair.

Any and all ridiculous ways of cutting your hair has been tried here in Chuuk. Many kids cut a circle around the base of their head and leave hair only on the top. Some shave lines or stripes. Lots of them have traditional mullets. Sticking combs and ribbons in your head is a good fashion statement. Cornrows, braids and all kinds of manipulations are fair game. One of my students shaved exactly half of his head, and left the other side about 3 inches long.

But by fair, hands down, the most popular way to play around with you hair is to grow a really long rat tail. A rat tail is a strand of long hair that hangs far past the rest of your head. This thread of hair can sprout from any part of your head. From the front, above the ear, or behind the head. The longer and more awkwardly placed rat tail makes it all the better. I have seen guys with buzzed heads, and a rat tail as thick as a pencil hanging down to their waist. Some will spend years and years cultivating the perfect sliver of hair to loop around their neck and hang like a necklace.

However the award for best hair goes to one of my local friends that just moved to Hawaii. He went to go live in America and was surely going to make a statement. He usually had a shaved head that was adorned with two sprouts coming out from both sides of his head. Oftentimes he would tie these together and form a graceful rope on the back of his neck. But the reason he takes the cake as the top hairstyle is not for the hair on his head, but on his face. My friend has a bulbous brown mole on his right cheek. The epidermal oddity is topped with six thick black hairs that twirl downward past his chin. He has taken full advantage of his three inch amigos and twisted them into a braid covered with colorful rubber bands.