how congolese get the 'sicky sicky': a story of sex with animals

this may be the most bizarre blog post to date. last week i decided to accompany two of my coworkers to the local hair salon. i wanted to see exactly what they had done to their hair. i must admit, the salon was quite sad- a couple random chairs, a bucket in the sink they filled to wash your hair, some old nasty towels. the experience was interesting as i watched how my coworkers had their hair washed with a couple different products then had their hair covered in yellow gunk and placed under the dryers for 30 mins. now the staff of this salon consisted of two zulu women and one women from the congo (who spoke very little english and zulu). with 30 mins to kill, the congolese woman decided to chat in the best way she knew how, and tell us stories of her homeland.

she first started by admiring my piercings and visible tattoos with a look of horror. she kept asking me "nice? nice?" which i think was her way of wondering if they hurt. she then told me "jesus no like you. no like tattoos" to which i responded that it was fine, jesus and i didn't have a relationship anyways. from there, clearly not off of her tattoo rant yet, she told us all how women in the congo get their boyfriends name tattooed across their breast and then they break up with said boyfriend, meet a new man, marry him without telling him of the tattoo and then on the honeymoon, when the new man finally sees the tattoo, he gets upset, goes to priest and then they get divorced. i think this happened to her sister, but it could have just been her way of saying woman... i am not quite sure.

now all of this was done in very broken english with random french words thrown in. it was entertaining and it killed the time while we all sat there (this was during work by the way). but then suddenly, our friendly congolese friend started talking about horses (she used the french word until we figured out what it meant) and doing absurd hand and hip gestures. it took me a while to catch on but finally i realized that she was talking about having sex with a horse. from there, the story went something like this:

woman: people *hip thrust* inyama but inyama sicky sicky then people get sicky sicky
me: so they get the sicky sicky from the animals, the horses?
woman: yes, animal sicky sicky, man sicky sicky then *hip thrust* woman. woman get sicky sicky (all of this was hand signaled with her grabbing her crotch and saying sicky sicky and then grabbing the imaginary crotch of someone else and saying sicky sicky-thus the transfer)
woman: get sicky sicky congo, no medicine, just kufa, kufa (followed by her acting dead)
woman: horse big for human
me: oh i didn't need to know that. where does this happen?
woman: congo and here. everywhere.
me: i see

by this point i was laughing in a stunned sort of way. she was so serious and she just kept repeating herself and her hip thrusts over and over to get her point across. then she continued:

woman: mulungu get fat woman, give money, money
me: wait, white people? me?
woman: yes, no you, mulungu in congo
me: ok good
woman: mulungu get fat woman, give money, give ruff ruff
all of us: dog?
woman: yes give dog, woman *hip thurst* dog. dog sicky sicky, woman sicky sicky. no medicine. woman kufa.

at this point i am wondering if she is saying she blames white people for the sicky sicky, which i take to mean HIV & AIDS. i don't ask her this question or any others for that matter.

after 2o mins of the animal sex conversation, my coworker had had enough and kindly demanded that she wash the crap out of her hair and finish the process. my other coworker said this woman hardly ever spoke when they were normally in there, and blamed me for her random (and disturbing) outbursts.

their hair was washed again, dried and then carefully combed into the style in which it will remain for weeks to come. then the three of us got up and left, laughing as soon as we exited.

lets just say that sicky sicky has become a part of our vocabulary now...