My hair raising experience, literally!

I have always had this peculiar brownish “weak” hair since I was a kid, which was always in cornrows that would start loosening up within the first week of plaiting. Back then, every girl in every primary school either had their hair plaited in cornrows or maintained their hair in a teeny weeny afro, a really tiny one, sometimes even stayed bald, kiparangoto! Now, for us, the cornrows girls, the standard for neat cornrows was super tight lines with the scalp clearly visible in between. The standard for beautiful ones was those done on long hair which had a long twirl resting gracefully on the shoulders or at least a few centimeters downwards on the neck. (This is obvious considering the notion, which is quite flawed, that longer hair means more beautiful hair (I mean, we are still very obsessed with length to date). Having “weak hair” that wasn’t long enough to twirl at the back, ladies and gentlemen, meant that my hair was almost never ‘neat’ and definitely ‘not beautiful’ despite the agonizing weekly visits to the salon.

The salon visits involved sitting on literally anything that could position your head on the salonist’s hips! Yes, hips! You see as a kid, you had to have your head locked down somewhere where it would remain stable despite all the movements a normal energetic child makes. This position wasn’t the best place to have your head in when all you wanted was to play with everything your eyes landed on or didn’t want to be in the salon in the first place.

These salon setups were not working for me at all. I felt that I deserved something better than having my head fixed on somebody’s laps for a minimum of one hour and having my hair pulled and tugged in all directions. So when blow dryers made their ways to our local salons, I realized that I could get away with having neat hair without necessarily having it painstakingly plaited. According to my calculations at the time, getting my hair burnt up weekly was freedom. Little did I know how much damage that was causing to my poor “weak” strands. 

High school came and we didn’t have a lot of options on how we’d maintain our hair thanks to the ignorance on afro hair care. It was an unwritten rule that you had to relax your hair when joining highschool. Luckily for me, my cousin had shared that she was able to go through highschool while just blow drying her hair. I decided to risk it and go against the almost obvious option for everyone else, the creamy crack a.k.a  relaxer, chem. This meant that I would get my hair blow dried at the beginning of the term and make sure that no water droplet touched it till we’d break for mid term. Well, I was not so keen on preventing my hair from getting wet but it was always surprisingly manageable even after getting wet. 

Over time, I realized that my hair didn’t really hate water, apart from chlorinated water. I would wash my hair during the school term and it would easily snap back to how it was before the wash. I only needed to ensure I tied it using a hair band while it was still moist. I also started discovering a wavy texture in my hair which felt so soothing to touch. Unfortunately, this crush on my natural hair was short-lived. 

My hair went into the worst state it’s ever been when I participated in swimming activities with zero knowledge on natural hair care. I remember one time during a stop-over at Nakuru while heading for the national sports competitions, some salonist on the street tried to convince me to get my hair done by her; my hair was so messy that she was convinced I must have been looking for salon service! My hair had been so messed up by the chlorine from the pools and I simply didn’t care and I just let it turn into whatever it pleased throughout the remaining part of high school.

I relaxed my hair in my first year of college. The creamy crack I had sworn to distance myself from somehow sneaked its way to my scalp. I was tired of struggling to figure out what to do with my severely damaged hair and I just wanted to get it out of my way. The hair at the back of my head and some behind my ears was so damaged that it was breaking off! I had no idea why but I knew I needed to fix it. So I settled on a hairstyle I had seen online that was a bob-cut. The problem with the internet is, you don’t get search results of any natural african hair styles unless you type in something like “short afro african natural hair black woman” (the stereotyping!). Unfortunately back then I didn’t know this so the only search results I got were of relaxed hair styled into a  bob-cut. Perfect! This would not only hide the always shorter hair and the back and sides of my head but also grant me some sense of freedom. I’ve never understood why doing something irreversible to your hair brings some sense of freedom; I think that’s why Mau Mau Loc’d their hair, we need some research on this. Back to my newly discovered hairstyle;  I thought the cut was cute, well sometimes it was, sometimes not so cute especially when freshly done, the sight of thin relaxed hair isn’t one to behold.

While in my second year, I stumbled upon the online natural hair communities. There was no turning back. I faithfully watched almost all Youtube videos on natural hair care. My hair began to thrive; beautiful curl pattern and thickness. Yes, My poor old hair wasn’t weak, it just had a unique beautiful curl pattern and it was actually capable of having some volume and length! 

I was so excited but the world around me wasn’t that receptive of natural hair, most people were still living in the stereotypical lies of all the bad and ugly things natural African hair was deemed to be. But like always, I didn’t care! I was in love with my kinky curls.

Since then, I’ve always had my hair in its natural state. I experimented a lot and did tonnes of stuff to my hair. The world has embraced natural african hair more and the last time I was in a salon, I witnessed a small girl getting her hair done while sitted on a high chair and the stylist served her chips and sausage as she took a rest from the ‘tiring’ process! Tulichezwa! 

What has your experience with kinky hair been like?

~Wanjiku