Thank God for hairdressers. I
don’t know what people like me would do if they did not exist.
I keep my hair unrelaxed and
it is fairly long. I don’t have any treatment I use on it save that I pamper
the edges by watching the kind of hairstyles I make, not allowing hair stylists
touch the tiny edge hairs while braiding with extension and taking out the
braids at the edges after a week or two of making the hair. No special
hair-cream, I use a mixture of sheabutter and some oils, nothing more.
So I was told about how good
it is to use onion juice to treat dandruff; mayonnaise mixed with any oil of
your choice as a deep conditioner and okra juice for detangling and leave-in
conditioning. I decided to add these to my regimen and I was so excited about
the thought. It is not that I didn’t know about these treatments before, just
that I was not into them. If I remember well, I had used okra juice as a
leave-in conditioner before, but that was just once. There was even a season in
my life when I applied finely blended avocado and banana to deep condition my
hair. The few times I maintained that regimen, I went through some difficult
time getting dried bits of banana and avocado off my hair. I ended up losing
some hair because no matter how well you wash your hair after such treatments,
some minuscule of the fruits will still remain in the hair. Because of the
stress from getting out the particles from my hair after it is dried, I stopped
that treatment.
Now that I have been reminded
of the onion, mayonnaise and okra treatments, I couldn’t wait to apply them
after loosening my previous hairstyle. So I loosened the hair, detangled and
washed. I then grated the onions (added a piece of ginger) and strained out the
juice using a handkerchief. I applied the resulting juice to my hair making
sure every strand of hair got soaked and the scalp was well reached. I was told
to not wash it away because it is a good leave-in conditioner too and gives
more shine to the hair. I let the onion-ginger juice dry out and afterwards
rubbed the mayonnaise-oil mix through the hair tips to the scalp. I covered the
hair with a plastic bag from 5pm till the next morning, I wanted the best
result. When morning came, I washed off the substance and then set to prepare
the okra juice. My hair by this time was so tangled up. But I wasn’t bothered
because I knew the okra juice would perform magic on the knots.
The okra juice eventually
landed on my hair and scalp. But, nah, it wouldn’t unknot the tangles. What! I
finished applying and came out of the bathroom, waited for the okra juice to
dry out and the see if I could detangle the hair. For where? I couldn’t o. Ha!
Thus, I sat down with the hair hoping to be able to finger-comb, but no, that
was a Herculean task. I spent hours, not two nor three nor four, to detangle
just a tiny portion of hair. It was then I realised the hair needed a professional
touch. It was past midnight, however, I had no choice than to send a text
message to my natural hair stylist if I could come over to her lounge later in
the day to get the hair deknotted. You need to feel the hair, 'o di koko bii
yanma', extremely tangled. There was no more remedy from my end. On this note,
I went to bed. I recall asking the Holy Spirit to give me wisdom on what to do.
It just occurred to me now that contacting my stylist was His idea because it
was after I prayed that it occurred to me to send her a text.
This morning, I prayed that
the Lord would give my stylist the wisdom needed to demat my hair in such a way
that I wouldn’t lose too much hair. Later in the day, I went to her shop and
she was afraid when she saw the hair. It was a really critical case of
tangling-up. She then told me that my order of applying the treatments was
wrong. I should have divided the okra juice into two parts, use a part to ravel
out the hair properly before washing and then apply after washing as leave-in conditioner
and for final detangling. It is after that step that I ought to add the
mayonnaise mix. The purpose of the mayonnaise treatment is for curl definition.
That was actually what knotted up the hair. 'Emi o mo o'. I didn’t know. Glory
to God anyway, I didn’t lose much hair, just the normal amount of hair you lose
when you comb your hair.
Do you now see why I thanked
God at the beginning for hairdressers? What can someone like me do without
them?
©2016,
Ayobami Temitope Kehinde
