Henna

Henna is everywhere in Morocco.  Usually the hands and feet are done for weddings and special occasions, but it’s also just for fun.  I have some pictures from a few days ago when me and two other PCVs got our hands hennaed.  The two girls lived in our town during their training and were coming back to visit their families.

Getting henna done

A friend of our host mom came to the house to do our henna.  She brought the henna mix (sometimes it’s natural but the “good stuff” includes acetone or gasoline or something that will make it last longer, this mix had acetone) and a syringe.  After filling the syringe, she just started drawing on our hands.  It’s surprisingly quick and amazingly beautiful.

Here you can see two types of designs – the flower one and the geometric one.  I know there’s other designs that are totally different in the Sahara, and probably in other regions as well.

The flower design

The geometric design

The actual hennaing was super fast, the rest of the time was us just waiting for it to dry before we touched anything.  It kinda felt like a girls day, getting pedicures.

We came back to our house where another volunteer and his friend visiting Morocco was hanging out with Marc.  All together we walked the girls back to the host family, where they were spending the night (this is around 10pm).  We were immediately invited in (there’s 6 of us at this point).  We were fed with shbekia, sfoof, and soda and chatted for a while.  Then they realized the girl visiting didn’t have henna like the rest of us girls.  The family shouts down from their roof and a neighbor shows up with henna to do her hands and some of our feet (this is around midnight).  Then we waited for those to dry, ate watermelon, and headed home (maybe around 1 or 2am).  This, I assure you, is totally normal.  There’s nothing like Moroccan hospitality – and sometimes you forget that until you see it through the eyes of a visiting tourist and realize how very special it all is.