Introducing: The Dancing Doctor: Why Dance?

One of my current hobbies is Afro-Latin dancing, which I have been doing on and off for about ten years now. Initially, I was too up and down with my work to give it much time but when I finally got a more settled job a couple of years ago, I was able to sign up for private classes and this has taken my dancing game to a whole other level. I have a couple of other hobbies and each of them has its place but Afro-Latin dancing is a class apart.

So why do I dance? And why Afro-latin dancing in particular?

For starters, there’s something about the Afro-Latin music that just hits the right spot. Currently trending in the Ugandan Afro-Latin community are Salsa, Bachata, Kizomba, and to a lesser extent Cha-Cha and Merengue. Latino-sounding music has always been one of my favourite music genres, and so has reggae. Latino music and its mash-up with the latter (reggaeton) takes me to a special kind of happy place. Kizomba sounds a lot like the Zouk and Semba of my childhood, thus suffusing me with warm feelings each time I hear it. I find bachata closest to "mainstream" music; it is more intuitive and easy to execute than its cousins and it is my favourite. It also has the best remixes of "regular" songs. 

To me dancing is the most logical response to music I like. It is one thing to listen to and appreciate a tune, a progression, lyrics and instrumental compositions but it’s a whole other thing to respond to what you are hearing with one’s whole being. Swaying with the strings, stepping with the drums, bouncing with the bass, rolling with the groove… That’s what dancing is about to me.

Being able to do so in a way that makes others watching want to jump in and join makes the dancing even more fun. Knowing that in my personalized response to what I am hearing is another’s enjoyment is very rewarding in and of itself.

Dancing lifts my mood. Many a time I have showed up for a social dance feeling blue but after a few minutes of spins and dips, I am on cloud nine. I find it to be great way to unwind after a long day/week or to prep my mood ahead of a stressing week. Some might say it is because of the “feel good” hormones released by the physical activity but I don’t get the same kick out of working out (not that I work out much – LOL).

Speaking of physical activity, Afro-latin dancing especially Salsa, is great on that front. It is a fun way to get in some cardio and core work outs. There’s a lot of movement and quite a bit of leg work. In order to get the posture, spins, jumps and dips right, a lot of attention to the core is required. It is said that core strengthening exercises make one a better dancer – I am yet to explore that. The arms, waist, neck, head all play a role in dancing so it is full body work out that leaves me sweaty, breathless and happy.

I also find social dancing to be a good, non-threatening way to socialize, like an ice-breaker. On the floor, if I’m dancing with someone I do not know, we’ll probably exchange names and a few basics that can set the foundation for later conversation. If I’m dancing with a friend, it is a time to catch up on each other’s lives. The global coverage of this kind of dancing means that I have common ground on which to interact with someone from a different country or even someone who speaks a different language, as long as they are a fellow Afro-Latin dancer.

These are some of my reasons why Afro-Latin dancing is currently such a big thing in my life. What are your reasons for engaging in the hobby that you do? Let me know in the comments.

 

Introducing: The Dreaded Doctor – Why dreadlocks?

I have dreadlocks. I first installed dreadlocks – dreads, locks, locs – sometime in mid-2011.

Why?

Loads of people have some significance attached to their decision to lock their hair; I have heard/read people talk about going back to their roots, or embracing who they are or discovering self, or … something. To be honest, I chose locs that time the same way I chose other hairstyles. It just happened to be an option, and at the time I did not have that many. Read on to understand my hair journey prior to, and how I eventually decided on installing locs.

Locs down on Washday 27Dec2021

                                                           

Growing up in Kampala, Uganda in the 1990’s, I attended a primary school where all children were required to keep their hair short, save the non-blacks. I didn’t think too much of this back then but in recent years I have heard parents raise questions around this, citing racism. I have to admit I have not given that much thought. But then I digress.

Come high school, I attended one of the prestigious Church-founded traditional girls’ schools. Here we were allowed to grow our hair out, within acceptable limits: simple styles plaited with the girl’s own hair during the week; hair out (afro or puff/ponytail) on Fridays and when going out of school premises; black or brown puffholders and hairbands. For plaits we had tuts (read as "toots") – bitutwa (simple 3 strand plait); jegs – bijegere (tuts joined into each other to make a row), thread and swas – biswahili (cornrows). Tuts were considered a style not fit for public viewing, so were usually plaited at night before bed to keep the hair from shrinking. However, one was allowed to wear tuts to class if the hair was long enough to fit in 3 only (or was it 4?). Another category that got away with wearing tuts to class was those with very long hair that would plait small tuts and could hold these back in a puff for class (this hairstyle was called devils for some reason). Outside class they would let their devils loose, giving the appearance of braids ... oh, the envy!!

The beauty of this season was the grooming to take care of natural hair in a resource-limited setting … LOL. Did I mention this was a boarding school, in the late 90s/early 2000s? There weren’t that many products on the market to make natural hair manageable and even if they had been available, access would have been an issue. So with Blue Magic, Amla, TCB, Morgan's Pomade, and a few others, we made it work. And we were known for having the best hair among all secondary school girls in the country – always neat, not a hair out of place – Sharp! A number of the school’s alumni continued to rock their natural crowns into their latter years, long before wearing one's hair natural was a thing.

Finish high school, off to university, and freedom! The world of extensions opened up to us. Braids, wigs, weaves… And chemical treatments. A lot of the ladies went on to chemically treat their hair as soon as they were done with their last exam paper in Senior 6. Some viewed it as a marker of something different – phew, finally done with high school!! Others were just relieved to finally get their thick manes into a manageable state. Again, all these detanglers, conditioners, etc to make natural hair manageable were not yet very common on the market.

Cue Mary’s hair. I have 4C hair – kaweke – that is quite fine. The individual strands are thin, and the number of strands per area of scalp is low. It was hard to keep it neat when I used to wear it short in primary. I would comb/brush it as I left home in the morning and within the 30minutes it took me to get to school, it would have rolled itself up into individual tiny millet-like balls all over my scalp.  Some, understandably, thought it was not a nice hair type but it had its advantages. When I grew it out, yes it was fine but not alarmingly so. It could hold a plaited hairstyle for ages. In high school, I would have my hair neat from when it is plaited over the weekend to when I had to let it out for Friday. I do not recall whether we used scarfs and bonnets back then while sleeping but I do not think we did regularly. During the school holidays and at uni, the extensions installed would stay neat longer than most people’s. And extensions were much easier to install in my hair than for people with thicker hair. When not plaited, my fine hair was also very manageable, easy to pass a comb through once detangled, easy to lay flat and hold a puff and easy to style. Its shrinkage though was for world cup, and so was the breakage. Rainy or humid days were almost guaranteed bad hair days and washday would see me regress from full puff to twa (teeny weeny afro) in the blink of an eye.

So I was not in a rush to chemically treat my hair; it was manageable enough and besides, I was afraid I would look like a drowned rat if I applied chemicals. I vividly remember an awkward conversation with a former classmate shortly before I installed the locs. She was berating me for still having natural hair even though we were now in the working world. She essentially said to me – grow up, we are no longer in high school, you look like a high school child – and gave examples of other classmates who had been asked to treat their hair while seeking employment.

Her barrage did not convince me to treat my hair but it got me thinking. I was struggling to maintain my natural hair, frequently installing new extensions shortly after removing the old, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with shrinkage amidst work and other life demands. The breakage of course was an additional concern with the frequent extensions.

I looked at available options and that was when I considered dreadlocks as a viable compromise. The hair would be “plaited” to some extent, so I wouldn’t have to deal with shrinkage. I wouldn’t be unplaiting and changing styles frequently sorting the breakage concern and the fine hair was unlikely to suffer from being loc’d. Coincidentally I had started attending a church that just happened to have a number of loc’d congregants, including the pastor’s wife. 

All of these helped concretise my decision to install loc’s way back then. At the time it wasn’t a momentous life-defining decision which is probably why I don’t recall the exact date that I got them done, but here I am, over a decade later, still rocking my locs. Who knew? Why I have persisted with locs for this long will be addressed in subsequent posts.  

For now, is there anyone loc’d reading this? What was your reason for getting loc’d? Do let me know in the comments, and be sure to check back for further updates in this series of the Dreaded Doctor. 

My 2022 Blogging Resolution

Happy New Year … WooHoo!

I am managing to get my first blog post up within the first week of the year… THAT is an achievement! LOL! 

But seriously, although this is not really a post about resolutions and all, this year some things need to change. I have been blogging on and off for more than a decade, going quiet for months or even years, then bursting out in a flurry of activity, usually fueled by a course or challenge … Not good at all. I could say the main reason for this inconsistency is the absence of a central focus for my blog. I write on anything that holds my attention and sits in my brain long enough to make me want to put it into writing. Not to mention the struggle of finding the motivation to actually write out my thoughts, or the time to do so. Very haphazard. Very unreliable. 

This year I plan to be more consistent. I have scheduled specific times to blog and post (Thursday evenings and Friday mornings for now).

I have downloaded a speech-to-text app to help me record my thoughts on the go. 

And … I have come up with a couple of “series” that hopefully will see me post at least twice each month. I will write around two things that are pretty dominant in my life at the moment: dreadlocks and dance. I plan to title the series as follows, with one post under each series each month: 

The Dreaded Doctor: I’ve been loc’d for a decade now. I first installed dreadlocks in my hair in 2011 and when one blogger wrote about their dreadlocks journeys last year, I thought … Hmm, now that’s an idea. But 10 years is a long time. I figured a single post wouldn’t cut it and so decided to do a series of dreadlocks-related posts. Procrastination and all, I figured the beginning of the year was a good enough place to start, so here we are.

The Dancing Doctor: I love music. I love to sing. And … I love to dance. I am not a professional dancer or into the performing arts in any way, actually quite the opposite. But there is a way in which dance keeps sneaking up on me, forcing me to acknowledge it’s as much a part of me as my doctoring. I have been involved in Afro-Latin dancing for about a decade now, again quite on-and-off but I have been quite consistent in the past couple of years. There’s more to this dancing than just music and moving the body and in this series, I will try to open the reader’s eyes to all this.

I will probably do a few posts on other topics of interest, and participate in a challenge or two, but I’ve chosen those two topics to be the running themes to keep me writing consistently this year.  That way I should have at least 24 posts come 31 Dec 2022.

I welcome you on this journey. Read on, comment, share, ask questions, and together let’s make 2022 a blogging year to remember.