Nairobi Hairdressers Scavenge for Human Hair to cut costs amid COVID-19 crisis

Some city hairdressers in Nairobi, have joined the poor to scavenge through heaps of rubbish in the City’s vast Dandora dumpsite, in search of used human hair as the scourge of the pandemic worsens on their businesses.

Though Second-hand hair extensions are nothing new in Kenya’s capital, the demand for such ‘cheap pproducts’ has skyrocketed due to the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis.

A hairdresser, Julia Wania, in an interview with Reuters/ France 24 noted that, scavenging for discarded human-hair extensions is a way to cut costs and offer a cheaper service to cash-strapped customers.

"You pick the hair according to the state you find it in, and decide whether it's good or not good enough. Some you just see and know they are not good enough and you leave them,” Wania said.

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The hair is found among the around 850 tonnes waste the ends up in Dandora daily and has lately included facemasks and rubber gloves as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"First thing after getting the hair from wherever I get it is to wash the hair and make it neat,” says Wania.

“But when a client picks it, I always wash the hair again when they are here to their satisfaction. Because it gets even cleaner when I go piece by piece as opposed to washing in a bunch. So I prefer a customer to pick and I wash again."

The Dandora dump opened in 1975 and now covers an area of over 30 acres. It has been labelled a severe health hazard by environmental groups with those who live near and scavenge at the dump exposed to dangerous toxins and air pollution from burning waste.

But searching the rubbish for food or items to sell helps support an estimated 3,000 families.

So far, Kenya has recorded over 23,800 COVID-19 cases with 391 persons dead.