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'Jilbab' and head lice: How can religion address poverty?
As wearing the hijab has increased among both women and girls in recent years, the related and growing problem of head lice in poor areas due to a lack of access to clean water has yet to be addressed.
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Schoolgirls wear hijab. (Shutterstock/-)
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hijab-wearing fourth-grader in the Central Java city of Karanganyar went viral on social media in the final week of August after her teacher helped her remove head lice and nits from her hair. The teacher explained that the girl’s mother, a scavenger, knew the girl had lice, but she was too busy earning a living to deal with the problem.
This story is enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end. But for people who often visit villages, seeing lice in children’s hair is unsurprising. In the least developed regions where water is scarce, such as in the eastern part of Indonesia, I often encounter children and adults with head lice.
Head lice live in dirty, damp hair. In 1984, while doing research in Bandung on the culture of poverty, I lived in a poor area and saw many female residents with lice, especially teenage girls. I eventually got lice myself, because the neighbor’s children often spent the night at my place. Luckily, the house where we lived had its own well and I had enough money to buy shampoo. I did not lack water to wash my hair and rid it of lice, but it was not that easy for the other people in the area.
Over the last several years, it has become extremely common for schoolgirls in the country to wear hijab, locally called jilbab, even in state schools. Jilbab seems to have become part of school uniforms.
It’s easy to understand that if someone constantly wears jilbab, all day and all week long, her hair will become damp or even soaked with sweat until it dries out again. If the hair is rarely washed, it becomes a breeding ground for head lice.
Shampoo ads often remind us about the importance of caring for our hair, especially if we wear jilbab. However, what they usually advertise is the effect of damp hair that causes the scalp to dry out, causing dandruff and hair loss.
But the shampoo ads never raise the issue of head lice. This is obviously because shampoo advertisements have a class bias. The problems of urban youth that ads show are dandruff, acne and dull skin, not head lice, or cracked lips from not eating enough fruits.
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