Black "Henna"

My "Black Henna" or "Piko" tattoos,  the day after I got them in Tanzania.

Danielle with her natural brown Henna & Me with the black stuff.

Kinda cool, no?

Danielle and I decided to get henna done by one of Saphia's friends at the end of our trip. We figured we'd leave Tanzania showing off a bit of their culture, plus it would be fun to have some pretty designs on our arms for a couple weeks. We met up with our henna artist at Saphia's house for the afternoon and over the course of 6 hours, we both had our arms painted up to our shoulders, and our feet painted to the ankles. We had a pretty major communication issue through the process though (apparently my Kiswahili is not coming along as well as I thought?) and Danielle, who wanted to go with the black, ended up with all brown. I figured I'd try a little bit of the black detailing mixed in with the brown, though I originally wanted only brown. What could possibly go wrong? They'd fade in 4 weeks anyways. Long story short, the woman refused to listen to my specific requests and went ahead and painted me with the black concoction. She then added a bit of brown detailing. 

I felt like I was nowhere near tough enough to rock my black "sleeves" but it was too late once the painting process was finished.

There is a major difference between brown and black "henna" - the brown stuff is henna, and the black stuff is hair dye. The brown henna powder is mixed with water and applied to the skin with a paper cone, similar to the way in which someone would ice a cake with an icing tube. The paste dries on your skin and is then scraped off once it has dried and left a brown stain on the skin. With the black "piko" as Saphia called it, a black hair dye powder was also mixed with water and applied in the exact same fashion. 

Unfortunately, I didn't know that the hair dye would cause a toxic reaction on my skin, and a few days after I got back to Canada, the skin under the black patterns broke out in an itchy, red rash. Curious to see if I should do anything to treat it, I googled "Black Henna" and was terrified by the results. The black hair dye applied to my skin must have contained a chemical called PPD, or para-phenylenediamine - a transdermal toxin and potential carcinogen which has been banned in most western countries. Most of the websites claimed that this rash could lead to severe allergic reactions and possibly, permanent scarring. I rushed off to see two doctors (the first one was pretty clueless) and was prescribed with a steroidal cream to reduce the swelling and hopefully prevent any scarring. 

I spent a good couple days terrified that I was going to have permanent scars in the shapes of flowers and swirls all over my arms and feet.

It's now been almost 4 weeks since my "Black Henna" tattoos were applied and I still have some faint red patches where the designs used to be. The steroidal cream worked to reduce the swelling and rash quickly and I did my best not to scratch at it. I think one of my saving graces has been the hot yoga classes I've been attending, which helped me sweat all the dye out of my skin in a matter of about one week. I'm still taking care of my blotchy arms and hoping that the marks fade entirely and that I don't have a sensitivity to PPD later in life.

So, keep my blotchy arms in mind next time you're on a holiday or at a fair somewhere and find temporary black tattoos on offer. It's not henna and it could cause serious damage!

Here are a couple websites with more information on the so-called "Black Henna" (and you'll see why I was so scared!):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna#.22Neutral_henna.22_and_.22black_henna.22

http://www.hennapage.com/henna/ppd/gotodoctor.html