12th August 2010 - Dreadlocks

We all went down to the fields to prepare for market that morning. Hannah had returned after a chaotic chain of hitchhikes from St Tropez, and with her was the elusive Nel, the friend who had begun the roadtrip with her but who had gone home injured. 

Harvesting the courgettes for the last time, I enjoyed the feeling of the plants brushing against my ankles. The French were farming barefoot – Xavier had done so too in both the Jammery and the garden, claiming that we WWOOFers were missing out by wearing shoes – because they liked the sensation of being so closely connected to nature. I couldn´t quite bring myself to go completely barefoot, and stuck with my sandals. As a young child, if my parents stood me without my shoes in the middle of a lawn, I would cry and refuse to move. I still wasn´t sure that I liked the feeling.

I was working near Else – Abelard´s sister – and marveling at the fact that she was only eighteen; her self-confidence made her seem so much older. I was also admiring her dreadlocks. They were long and thick, the colour of sand, and were tied up in an enormous messy bun at the nape of her tanned neck. I had wanted dreadlocks for as long as I could remember, and my phase of wearing multicoloured homemade felt dreads the year before hadn´t really satisfied my cravings. They had looked quite convincing, but I had still been able to take them out at night. I might have been more likely to adopt dreadlocks if I had had a long-term job as a farmhand; my main reason for never getting them was that I thought that prospective employers might hold it against me. Too many people had too many preconceptions about the dreadlocked population. I didn´t want to be judged prematurely. Perhaps I would get dreadlocks when I retired. Or else when I was my own manager of my own café. But for now I would have to continue suffering hair envy.

Everybody in that family had at least one dreadlock. Even the dog. Abelard´s hair generally looked unkempt, but it had a couple of defined black ropes running through its matted length. Edouart had one thin dreadlock in his long grey beard; his hair was too sparse to carry one. Kneeling on the ground dressed in loose cotton clothes and running the dry soil through his fingers meditatively, I understood why he had come to be called Le Prophète: he could have walked straight out of an illustrated Bible. He was a man of great calmness and – unlike his son – gentleness. Those fingers were deft and skilled, used to knead the fine rustic bread he made each day and to tease milk softly from the teats of his goats. It was a simple life that the family led, but they were far from being simple people. The more time I spent with them, the more they intrigued me.