One of the VCS pastors here kept mentioning my hair and how I needed another cut. He volunteered to cut it for me. He said he currently worked on two other heads at the university. He was insistent about cutting my hair. He said it was his special mission.

What can you do in a case like that? Not to accept his offer would have been considered rude, I think. I told some other guys about it, and they said under no conditions should I let this guy touch my hair. They said to expect a "military". So I guess I wasn't exactly thrilled about the prospect of a buzz cut.

I put him off for a week, however on the last day of Vacation Church School the pastor showed up with a little bag. Inside was a pair of worn shears and a razor blade. He was going to cut my hair before our VCS graduation exercises. Convinced that there was no polite way out of it, I followed his instructions and reluctantly stripped to the waist and sat in the shade on a little wooden bench under an Acacia tree. (He was surprised I wasn't wearing a T-shirt.)

He took the rusted scissors from the bag and carefully trimmed away -- first on the left side of my head and then on the right. His cuts were slow and deliberate, not like the quick snipping of a hair stylist. He would make a trim and then examine his work. A few of the kids stopped by to witness the work. It didn't hold their interest for too long. I thought they would be a bit more fascinated with it than they were.

I sat and wondered how many different types of hepatitis there were. Two or three? How many could I catch from this? All I heard from him was "Very nice, very nice hair" or "Curly hair -- not like Filipinos". That's not exactly what I wanted to hear, but he continued with his work.

He told me he cut a head of hair for a penny when he was in college -- and it paid for his education. That's a lot of practice for certain, but college was about 30 years ago too. I was just hoping that he wouldn't cut off so much that someone with skills couldn't repair the damage. Hair continued to drop in the dirt.

After the scissoring was finished, he took the razor from its paper pocket and shaved around the edges of the cut. I didn't move a muscle. This was an old razorblade in his hand. I could feel the blade scraping against my neck. He asked if the blade was stinging, but it wasn't. He would trim a bit and then shake the blade in a little cup of well water. I prayed for the skilled hands of a surgeon on my head.

Finally he finished. He advised me to style my hair with Vaseline, and handed me a mirror. I looked at myself and was surprised that it actually looked OK. Two people told me it looked better than my normal MegaMall cut. The MegaMall charges 100 pesos, but the pastor didn't accept anything for his work.

The pastor and I became very good friends. He has a great testimony to tell - but that's enough for another book.