Haircut in Kigali-Danny the barber

Have you ever had a bad haircut abroad? For my haircuts in Kigali I’ve kept the same barber for more than 3 years. Before I get into the story of how that happened. Here are pictures of my favorite cuts he made.

Challenges of Getting a Haircut in Kigali

One of the problems faced by foreigners in Rwanda is that the barbers don’t know your personal preferences when it comes to giving a haircut. Part of this stems from a communication barrier between Kinyarwanda (the main language spoken in Rwanda) and English. You might find they don’t understand what you mean or misinterpret what you wanted. I learned this the hard way. It could be even worse when they don’t take your input at all.

For me, before I visit a barber I usually prefer one that someone has recommended. Personally I don’t think being at the mercy of a stranger with the power to wreak havoc on your hair is something to be taken lightly. Personal complaints include: shifting the hairline to expose more of the forehead, trimming away parts of the beard. (this one is particularly painful when a part of the beard takes weeks to grow), shaving off the beard outright … I could keep going.

My Worst Haircut Experience

Here is an experience from one of my first haircuts in Kigali. The barber pointed at my beard and asked me one word, ‘Cut?’. I looked at his fingers in the mirror and they looked like they were tracing the outline of my beard. So silly me assumed he meant a quick trim to shape it. With a smile I said yes. My smile vanished as he shaved off the entire right sided of my beard and my smile disappeared. To my horror I now understood what he meant. I found a picture that I think represents the look on my face then.

The damage was done. The barber glanced at me in the mirror, likely sensing the tension, but there was no saving the situation. I told him to shave the rest, resigned to leaving in defeat. Walking home, my face felt strangely bare, even naked. Safe to say, I never returned to that shop.

Finding the Right Barber

After my haircut disaster, a housemate recommended a nearby barber shop. That’s where I met Danny, the first barber in Kigali to ask, “Boss, show me design.” Unlike my previous experience, Danny wanted my input from the start. In Ghana, barber shops display hairstyle posters for easy selection, like this:

Danny’s shop didn’t have any of those pictures. Now what do I do? Think… I take out my phone and search Google for haircuts for men and show him an example. Now Danny is not done yet. He points out that the beard style in the sample I showed him is very different from my current beard. So I tell him to just smooth out my current beard; the little I had managed to grow back.

He gets to work trying to get my hair as close to the image as he can. In the sample there is a lot of hair up top. So I tell him to make mine lower and he does this. Finally a barber I can work with in Kigali. In subsequent visits I had to learn a little bit of Kinyarwanda to get him to understand some of the directions I was giving him. Here’s a picture he took:

He doesn’t have a beard himself though. Smiles are back 🙂

Conclusion

Key takeaways when going for a haircut in Kigali you can bring reference photos, or learn basic Kinyarwanda phrases for haircuts and use recommendations from others when picking a hair salon for a cut.

PS: Danny’s number is +250780724956 also on WhatsApp . When I wrote this post his shop was at Kimironko, Kigali. You can have it on one condition that you don’t steal my spot. I keep having to wait in line nowadays to get a haircut.