THERE is this little girl staying with me that reminds me so much of me when I was growing up. She is boisterous, hardworking, beautiful, and adventurous and at the same time, she loves to dress up as a princess.
She loves watching dance shows from the dance groups and she loves her princess shows as well.
Netflix’s ‘Demon Hunters’ has died in my house ooo biko (see how Nigeria is influencing my language) but I digress…
She had a white doll whose hair she was always seeking to plait and play with… (I just couldn’t get her a black doll, no matter how hard I tried), but this gave me a hint. She has very ‘hard’ hair (what we call kpɛnkpɛshi hair) unlike that of the doll she plays with.
Before she came to live with me, her hair was always in braids. But I remember that when I used to live in Liberia, ‘cornrow’ was what we were allowed to take to school and so I suggested this to her mother and cornrow was what we adopted.
My own daughter takes very good care of her own hair as she learnt over the years. We explored all the natural foods she could use for her hair, including honey, bananas, egg, avocado, oil and all the things I didn’t know during my time.
My daughter taught me how to take care of my hair in a good way… and so we started this play time of learning about body…
It was tough at first, but there was always a joy of achievement when she spent a day learning to nourish her hair, as opposed to watching TV sometimes and then eventually she started to try and plait it too.
I was surprised at how fast this little girl learnt how to plait her own hair and again, that reminded me of Liberia where we learnt how to do ‘cornrow’ and ‘countryplait’ on our own head and how empowered we felt.
Soon, she began her menses too and again, we had to teach her another way to manage herself and her body. There are so many things she will have to learn about herself and growing body.
She is turning into a beautiful young woman who is self-assured and bold and steps with pride. The longing in her eyes when she watches these princess shows have vanished, I noticed
I know that one day, her well managed hair will be cut when she goes to JSS and eventually to SHS. I remember when mine was cut after I came to Ghana and the loss of person I felt for a long time.
I never ever wanted to pay attention to my own hair ever again as I felt it was something unwanted and the thought of what I had lost, without my consent was a locked trauma. Locking my hair became one of my ways of not dealing with my hair. Though I came to love the look and freedom it affords me, it started out as something to control hair I didn’t want to deal with.
This is because every time I touched it, I remembered how it looked and the joy that barber displayed when he put the pair of scissors through it and how everyone around, including my aunties seemed to be so happy about cutting my hair…
I am grateful that I got the opportunity to show this young lady a life lesson and I know that it will stay with her.
Imagine if we took the opportunity, instead of calling hair a waste of time and that it will grow back (so simplistic)!
Imagine if we used it as a teaching point and insisted only on certain hairstyles…
What was it called in our time? Home economics? I don’t remember… but imagine, how we could start an entire generation of young women, with a new skills and perhaps even start an entire new hair industry.
And perhaps we could use the opportunity to teach some unemployed youth how to make cornrow and they could be employed to make and teach young ladies this beautiful Art Form.
Just Imagine This…..
