I finally shared the full story behind my hair on my Tv show Inside Pages on Metro Tv.
Today I’m going to give MY TAKE on the Achimota
school-Rastafarianism-dreadlocks saga and it will be about MY HAIR EXPERIENCE-
as you know and can see I have kept my hair in its natural state for years and
there’s a story behind it. First, I’ll talk about My Big Chop and then 2 major
experiences after the chop.
• The big chop
In my second year at the University of Ghana, in 2008
I made a practical decision. I stopped applying perming cream to my hair to
straighten and remove the texture. I did this to allow for new growth in
anticipation of a big chop. This was contradictory to the wild joy I embraced
soon after completing SSS, now SHS. Perming my hair was the long-awaited moment
of freedom from the many years of compulsory cutting of hair per the rules of mainstream
education. But few years down the line, it was no longer freedom and joy
because of the cuts and burns from the perming cream. My hair was really
textured and that meant more cream and it stayed on longer before washing it
out. The terrible headaches from sitting under the hairdryer added to the
excruciating pain for every trip to the salon. I gave up on the “beauty is
pain” mantra and cut it all off.
• The prejudice
This was in 2 parts. The first encounter with
prejudice over my hair was at the university where I did the big chop. When I
abandoned the European hair – the quite long, straight, and flowing hair, I had
committed a capital offense. I had breached the conformity rule of society and
I would pay dearly. I didn’t know it was a must for girls to cut their hair and
for women NOT to cut their hair or go natural. What I encountered then was
shocking. At the university, I was treated with prejudice. I was teased,
mocked, ostracized because my hair had become different. I was called poor and
once offered money by a boy at school who said my parents couldn’t afford to
pay for a perm for me. I was called small girl; house help and a crazy girl who
wanted to be like an African American. Outside campus, I was thought to be a
foreigner and the treatment was good and bad, but mostly bad.
The second prejudiced encounter: While I worked in
the joyfm newsroom, one day, I laid down my wig and appeared in my own hair,
low and combed. What happened next was also shocking. I was asked to leave the
office because my appearance was not professional; I looked like a small girl;
my hair was unkempt. Fast forward [some time after 2013], my hair had grown out
and I started wearing it in twists and later big twist-outs. Surprisingly this
style was somewhat accepted. The next problem was going on tv in my own hair.
Some people at work had problems with it. But 2 men at the top made it possible
for me to be me at work and on tv. But that was the first hurdle. Being a woman
on tv in Ghana around the year 2015 with “natural hair” was lonely. By virtue
of my hair, I was the hard woman, the “I know my rights woman” who won’t find a
husband. I was the bushy-haired woman who needed to get herself a comb. Some
colleagues even suggested I had stinky hair even though I washed my hair every
day while they wore weaves sown on their hair which meant no water, lots of
warmth and yes…bad odour. I was automatically called rasta and associated with
Rastafarianism despite not making any such proclamation. And treated like them,
with contempt. Hitherto I didn’t pay particular attention to the prejudice
against the rasta folk and was probably guilty of the same before.
Because my “unprofessional” hair was being
accommodated at work, I had to dress really formally to look professional. And
yes, sometimes I worried about ending up jobless because of my hair. A day to
come when I would have to choose my hair or my job. Thankfully it never did, at
least for me.
Do something for me right now. Google professional
woman and what you will see on the internet will not look like me. In fact, the
few black women you will see will not be wearing their natural hair but long
flowing weaves or wigs. I have no qualms about this decision.
My hair journey continues. People still stare rudely
and wonder, “what is wrong with her?” Others have come to accept it. It may
have grown on some people.
Change has been at a snail’s pace but, at least it
has been a continuing occurrence. I conclude with my position on the Achimota
school dreadlocks saga being summed up in this quote by Learned Hand (1942). -
American judge and judicial philosopher.
“… but this much I think I do know - that a society
so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a
society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society
which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of
that spirit, that spirit will in the end perish.”
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