The war to tame my hair

my wig. I said no, because you do not give away something that was given to you during the distribution of the deceased’s belongings, pakugovewa kwenhumbi.
Piri already had Tete Stella’s other wig, the one with long blonde wavy hair made in China. It was not one hundred percent human hair but it looked so real. In the village, who would know that Piri’s wig was not the real thing? Piri just wanted my wig out of greed.

“But you will not wear it,” Piri said. “Why are you being selfish, denying us the opportunity of wearing a wig made with real hair from Indian women? You can afford to buy your own wig in Harare or even in America. Some of us will never see America, but you will. Give us the wig!”
Piri’s husband Misheck stood there giving me his missing front teeth grin. He begged me to give Piri the wig. “Please Maiguru, give it to her so she can look like a white madam today and then tomorrow, she can change and look Indian or Chinese. Why can’t she be like other women, ndiye adiiwo?”

Then he went on to count the number of village women with more than one wig. No doubt most of the wigs were hand me downs from relatives in town or within the diaspora. It was true that I was not going to wear Tete Stella’s 100 percent human hair wig. In my old days, I probably would have tried to wear one.
There was indeed a time when I aspired to look more white, western and therefore civilised. That was my notion of beauty. I hated my hair. What sort of hair was this that I could only comb when it was wet?

I wanted my African hair to be long, straight and silky, just like all the ladies on magazine advertisements. So I engaged on a war to tame my hair. It had to stop being hard, kinky mufushwa hair.
I must explain the background to the war with my hair. The war started very early in the village compound with my grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa lining up all her grand children and shaving our heads with one razor blade. She always left a little tuft of hair at the front.
After the age of ten, Mbuya spared us the razor. Among the village women, there was no battle with hair. Our hair was natural and we did what it wanted.

Down at the river we used ruredzo, the traditional ground vine shampoo with sharp thorns, green leaves and purple flowers. We sat for hours combing our thick hair slowly until it was a big mountainous Afro.
Then we parted the hair in little tufts and wound a thread around the hair to weave intricate patterns on the head.
At times our hair was left sticking out in all directions like horns. You could see the scalp between the tufts of hair. There was no pressure to conform to a different type of beauty. In those days, fashion magazines hardly made their way past the Hwedza Mountains.

We relied on artistic patterns used by generations of African women. Sometimes the women just wore it short, like Mbuya Nehanda, the Spirit Medium who fought against British settlement and was allegedly hung on a tree on Josiah Tongogara Avenue in 1896.
On the photo taken before she was hung, Mbuya Nehanda looks majestic with short hair, cloth off the shoulder, strong legs clad with copper anklets.
When I moved to the city, I discovered African hair was seen, measured, compared and graded on the yardstick of European society’s standards of beauty. Kinky natural hair showed that you were not civilised and not Western enough. Not only that, it revealed that you were from the village and your hair probably smelt of kitchen hut smoke.

A beautiful African woman was one with straightened hair and skin bleached with Ambi skin lightening creams. Beautiful women belonged to a different tribe. They had straight hair, straight nose and were light skinned. They normally lived in the affluent part of the city. Naturally, they got the men with nice jobs, houses and cars. They had beautiful intelligent children who spoke only English and no Shona.
My hair became a social and emotional battlefield about my image and identity.
It seemed most people around me were lighter skinned than I was and they had better hair. Their hair was thinner and easier to manipulate and tame. But not my hair. It was thick, kinky and thick. No ordinary comb would go through it except an iron Afro comb.

I had typical African hair, impossible to tame unless you used masses of chemicals to make it straight. With that kind of hair, combined with a dark face and somewhat thick lips, I had no chance of ever winning the beauty contest even if it was held at Hwedza Growth Point.
I was determined not to have native hair. My hair was going to be straight, long, silky and beautiful just like a European woman’s hair. One day I went to Machipisa in Highfields to have my hair relaxed. Sitting in the hair dresser’s chair, I could see myself leaving the place with a crowning glory of silky straight hair.

Two hair dressers from what must have been graduates from Machipisa School of hair dressing worked on my hair with hot combs. They put lots of Vaseline and proceeded to fry my hair. I could feel the heat coming really close to my ear lobes. I closed my eyes to hide the tears. The quest for beauty was painful.
I smelt the hair burning and opened my eyes. My hair on the right side of the head was smoking and brown. The hairdressers grazed my scalp a bit. I said, “You have burnt my hair, mandipisa vhudzi.” They said the comb had been on the hot stove for too long. And that was it. There was no apology. All they wanted was a full payment.

I paid and moved in to a wig shop. I tried one with straight black synthetic hair. The woman in the mirror looked like someone I had never seen before. I looked ugly and even darker. Besides, the wig looked fake. I quickly gave up on the wig idea.
Fortunately the remaining burnt hair could be plaited with extensions. Then I discovered real American relaxing hair products. Such products had already been in America since 1920 when Madame CJ Walker, an African American woman introduced hair products and the straightening comb for black people with kinky hair living in America and Europe.

Her products made black hair straight, soft and silky. She was the first black woman millionaire. No more kinky African hair on black women. They too could fit into the “ideal” beauty standards set by European women. A woman with straight hair was likely to be hired in a job than the one with African natural hair.
I got my hair straightened in a more professional hair dressing saloon where American products were in abundance. I looked good. At church, young men started looking at me. If it was not for my dark skin and a nose that was not so fine and straight, I could have entered the Miss Zimbabwe contest.

My hair was retouched every eight to twelve weeks to straighten new growth. I continued purchasing the products to keep the growing roots straight. The itchy burning from some chemical straighteners was nothing I could not live with.
After three years, I noticed that my scalp was beginning to get damaged. Rather than accept the creamy relaxer, my hair refused to grow. It was breaking. There were some bald patches here and there on my head. I had over used the chemicals. I was losing the battle to tame my hair. Fighting to make my hair straight, long and silky cost me a lot of money, burnt ears, temporary balding and lots of dollars.

The fight with my hair was not unusual. In many ways, it was a rite of passage. I was among millions of black women who spend time and money to relax their hair, to perm, weave and wear wigs. Today, according to research data, black hair care products make up a US$10 billion industry.
In America alone sales of home relaxers totalled US$45,6 million, according to Mintel, a market research firm. Shiploads of human and synthetic hair come from Asia, Brazil, China and other places. One day, some of us should acknowledge our sisters in these countries for sharing their hair.

In a movie by Chris Rock called Good Hair, he traces the hair industry from India to Los Angeles. He says black women in America pay as much as US$1 000 for a single hair weave. A woman without straightened hair, a weave and a wig is not fully groomed. Groomed professional women including Michelle Obama straighten their hair.
Yet this does not mean there are no women going natural. These days you spot natural locks more often than ever before. More and more women wear their twists, locks or teenie-weenie Afros, known as TWAs. Others have what I call the Mbuya Nehanda look, short and natural.

Mbuya Nehanda could never have imagined what hair wars were coming for the African woman. For many years we have continued to assault and tame the hair so it can look just like European women’s hair. The wigs, the weaves, the perms – it is unending and costly. I only went natural when I realised that I could not win the war to tame my hair. I control it in locks, the same way women who have travelled the hair journey have done.

Piri grabbed the blonde wig away from me and said, “I also want to belong to fashion, there is nothing to wait for, chekumirira hapana.” Piri wanted to wear the wig at church, funerals and at the burial society meetings. She would put a headscarf to protect the wig a little when she went to the grinding meal with a bag of maize on her head. I gave her the wig.

At the end of the day, how one woman wears her hair is a personal choice. Making a choice is crucial, as long as the benchmark of beauty is one we are able to set ourselves. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.

• Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and is a consultant and director of The Simukai Development Project.