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.