Childhood: Memories of Natural Hair Care

Note to reader

After a Twitter exchange where I commented on the plaiting of natural African-American hair, I was invited to write about the childhood memories I shared, memories from about 40 years ago where somehow I might have confused names and descriptions of the styles.

I penned a piece for the Natural Ever After site where the full blog with pictures appears, and you are free to post your comments there too.

The main article at Natural Ever After - Childhood Memories of Natural Hair Care

I know what Afro is

Walking down a street in Antwerp, I was happened upon a large shop front sign – Afro Hair Centre – the shop window was pasted with pictures of beautiful African American ladies but I was at pains to notice any that anything remotely natural for hair.

The pictures regaled me with relaxed curls of fanciful design and the amazing reality of globalisation where rural Indian and Brazilian women had travelled the world by reason of their long hair cut to serve an industry of hair extensions – I have felt like I have entered a haunted house each time disembodied lots of hair formed the merchandise of any outfit.

Many evolutions of hair design

It reminded me of when as a young boy hair was natural and the embodiment of amazing beauty, long before combing irons were heated on kerosene stoves and the hair laden with Vaseline was singed to straighten it for a new kind of look.

My aunt after secondary school became a hairdresser and with that came relaxers and all sorts of chemicals and sprays that the African woman punished her hair with to give it an unnaturally synthetic look, but that had become the new look.

Cornrows a plenty

As big brother when we lived in Jos, I had two sisters much younger than I and every fortnight I knew my play time will be usurped for a new kind of duty.

My mother sat on a chair with my sisters on a footstool just between her legs had their hair washed, combed, parted and designed for braided cornrows or plaits.

The cornrows had names, Shuku (bunched up in the middle), Ipako elede (A pig’s nape – with the ends to the nape of the neck), koroba (bucket, designed as a whirl from edges to the centre), kolese (Without legs – with the ends to the front just above the forehead) amongst other designs that did not particularly have names but provided artistic licence, in some cases the cornrows ended up in plaits, it was left to what was fancied at that time.

Threading the clumps

In the case of plaits, my job was to string the black thread from finger to big toe probably about 20 times and then cut the loop at one end to produce lengths of thread.

3 lengths of thread were then knotted at one end, the hair was parted into sectors and then manageable polygonal shapes, each section of hair was then plaited with thread from the base until the hair ends, the threads were then knotted to prevent the threads and hair from coming loose.

Sometimes each plait was left alone kinked into an L-shape a third way up the length, in other cases they were joined up in wigwam fashion or linked together with one popular design being called Eko Bridge – this was named after the new bridges linking the Lagos mainland to Lagos Island over the lagoon. Onile gogoro suggested a tall house, the plaits were bent to different sides of the head to give a different look, the options limitless depending on taste and aesthetics.

Changes to hair fashion

The plaits could also be coiled on a pencil to look like twirls, this was all natural and beautiful. After a while cotton threads were abandoned for synthetic tubular threads called colloquially called rubber but those plaits were fire hazards even if for a while they were fashionable.

As we moved into the 80s, plaits became unfashionable and most what you would find in rural settings as relaxers became the stock in trade of hairdressers, much as it seemed to make hair more manageable the cost of maintenance was high and where unprofessional services were used lots of women suffered 1^st, 2^nd or even 3^rd degree burns to their scalp.

The relaxers themselves have the most revolving and pungent odours, in some cases people were prone to emesis but after this foray into the unnatural and synthetic, some ladies are returning to appreciating the beauty of low-cuts or naturally braided or plaited hair without extensions or chemicals, and I think that is a good thing.

Globalisation of disaster relief

Weapons of Mass Relief

One could not help but wonder at the complete inadequacies of developed, developing and under-developed countries (used in the context of 3^rd-world dialogue) in dealing with the natural disasters that have hit their peoples in the last few months.

To surmise, one can see the sweeping global phenomena of globalisation, trade liberalisation, democracy and eradication of poverty through debt forgiveness and other do-gooder mechanisms have overlooked pertinent issues.

This is made ever so stark from the fact that “so-called” Nuclear powers with hefty defence budgets to defend the realm have forgotten that there would be no realm to defend if the citizenry of the realm have been wiped out and left destitute by natural disaster.

More so, these countries have their military forces pre-occupied with unnecessary wars and disputes that seem to foster more havoc than peace with their presence.

The political landscape is both littered and cluttered with intransigence and belligerence that make the Middle Ages seem rather tame.

What has happened to the civilisation of humanity that puts these quests for military aggrandisement over the welfare of its peoples?

We have come to cross-roads, is it weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the powerful or weapons of mass relief from the powerful to the weak?

I hear no leaders speaking up for this.

In the end, the global co-operation needed for attending to natural disasters should involve allocating part of the defence budgets to relief where Africa hosts relief materials for immediate despatch to Asia and Europe, Asia for America and Europe, Europe for America and Africa and so on.

This under the co-ordination of the UN or some other International body like NATO should despatch with immediate effect when disaster strikes at their support areas.

Military weaponry as drones, satellites, recognition and surveillance systems should come in to play to identify the worst affected places and assets brought to bear.

That would be global progress very much in the light of the establishment of the UN.