A. M. K

The problem with African hair, most of it, is that it is frizzy and tightly coiled . I used to refer to mine as steel wire. When you wake up in the morning, it stands straight up in the middle and is matted on both sides, making you look like a baby Sumo wrestler. The thing with natural hair is you must plait it every night before you sleep. You just cannot fall into bed effortlessly, you must always pay it attention.

On that note, I would say it is a big time consumer. Our primary schools used to call it a time waster. If we did not shave it all off, we would have wasted a lot of time getting stupid. That is why only Arabs, Indians and ‘Half-castes’ [this is the word that was used for mixed race people those days] were allowed to grow their hair, because their hair would not make them stupid.

Natural hair is an attention seeker. Whenever you let it out, there will always be someone sniffing at the back of your neck, wishing they were invisible, stretching and pulling back their eager, anxious hand, wondering if you would be offended if they could feel the texture of it, just a little. It looks like wool. Is it wool? Does it deflate when you tap it down? Is it real? All the way down to the bottom? Do you even have a scalp within that tangled mess?

The problem with African hair, most of it, is that it likes to puff up instead of fall backwards. The new generation is lucky. These days, unlike when our mothers combed our hair, the comb does not have to sweep through, from front to back. And it does not have to be a narrow tooth comb, leaving salt water droplets pricking the corners of your eyes, your scalp throbbing.

The thing about natural hair is, it likes to recoil back into tight knots. It is not interested in length checks and stiff straightness. It loves to fluff up at the top if you sleek it on the sides. It loves to fill your head like the dark night of a dense forest where nothing can get it and nothing can get out. On Monday it was long and on Tuesday, a drop of water shrunk it. “Wait, did you cut it?”

Natural hair is a mystery. Years and years of taming it and hiding it and we still do not know what it is. It is stubborn and likes to show off. Even after years of begging it to flow and be pushed around by the wind, it still grows out curly. Then you have to burn your scalp again.

It is not even wedding material. Imagine, a bride, walking down a flower strewn aisle with tight curls on her head! What kind of bride is that, who does not love herself enough to put on at least a weave or maybe even a wig. Imagine her, dancing to her entrance song, a tiara on her head and no ponytail at the back. Where would the tiara even sit?

The problem with African hair, most of it, is that it is expensive to take care of. You need a sulphate-free shampoo so that you don’t punch the moisture out of it. It will be very hard to find this. L’oreal wasn’t made with you in mind. After that you need a conditioner, leave-in conditioner, hair butter, hair oil, and a gel to make your baby hair pop. You need to let people know that it is not all frizzy. Some of it actually sleeps.

The other thing about natural hair- it is so day to day mundane! You can do this all at home without ever stepping into a salon. You could have sat three hours in a dryer but here you are detangling. Where’s the drama and the triumphant exit as you walk out of the salon choking on ORS Olive oil spray?

When you really think about, the biggest problem with natural hair is, it is not straight. It is too African, too common place. Now, if we had Brazilian hair! We could literally whip it back and forth. No more satin headscarves, wake up flawless, you might not even need a face full of makeup to distract from your hair anymore. The problem with natural hair, is, it is not like white people’s hair.

There is a following that believes that by the very nature of men and the nature of women- woman and men should be kept apart because woman is to man what a deer is to a leopard. That, it is therefore impossible for them to be platonic with each other. To protect the pride and honour of the men who follow this teaching, women and men meet only within the nuclear unit or within the approved blood lines.

Women are protected from their inevitable ability to tempt and men are protected from their inevitable ability to succumb to temptation. That is, according to my own deduction.

President Buhari on a visit to Germany, standing next to Chancellor Angela Merkel is [in]famous for saying, “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room.”

It is the proud declaration of many such as him that, ‘their women’ do not work for a living. Although it turns out that this is an option that some would rather have, just like the option of driving cars.

A comment on an article about women who had changed the face of Sudan, a man had written requesting the writer to add one more female figure who had fought against the practice of female genital mutilation. He stated that although the practice had been aimed at preventing women from sinning, it was no longer feasible because it all began in the mind and not in the physical body as previously thought. This seemed to put the commenter at ease. It seemed to please him that it was now just the mind that had to be controlled, with little physical damage, a different, but less invasive form of control.

This view of control is very unpopular today in an age where there are very few if any, taboos left.

In spite of all the calls to freedom, to do whatever our minds can think of without any harvest, the question still recurs. Can women and men work in close proximity without winding themselves up?

In European culture, unlike the Arab, Ancient Chinese and Traditional African culture, the individual comes first, he creates his own destiny, pursues whatever he desires to pursue, to whom it may concern. But in the other cultures mentioned, everything was done for the benefit of the community, including what Buhari was referring to when he spoke about his bedroom. The control and in some cases the commodification of women served to protect both political and economic power- in what womb which men were incubated, whose clan you expanded, whose name would live on. There were rules to follow and banishment if you did not.

It is now the new millennium and many women are crying ‘foul’ and yet Carrie Bradshaw still chooses Mr. Big, forsaking all others- regardless of where you meet all others, even if it is in the middle of an Arabian desert and the hot desert wind is blowing. And Carrie, admitting that she would never be the wife who stayed in and cooked (well, she still had to choose a ‘take-out’ menu) and that she would never be ‘a woman who wanted children’, allows Mr. Big to buy her a ring. And the possessiveness that is exclusivity, the ‘ring fencing’ that is commitment, the borderlines, the high walls around the little world two people create between themselves, once again, went up.

Author: A. M. K

The problem with natural hair

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