Diary of an Honest Naturalista: Week 39

About three weeks ago, on my way to work one morning, while in the bus, I noticed a lady staring me. I was very worried at first. I caught her stares and looked away. The next time our eyes met, before I had the chance to look away, she smiled. 

I was about to give her a puzzled look that said “Do I know you?” when she quickly said “I like your hair.” Automatically, the face lit up immediately. This is the same hair Madam Adams called mop hair.

I then looked at her hair and noticed lovely-made dreads on it. I told her her dreads were beautiful. It was then she went like.

“No, they are not dreads. This is my real hair.”

“Are you serious? It can’t be. How?” I asked, surprised.”

“Well, they look like dreads, but I just twisted my hair. They are not.”

“How is that? Mine is also in twists, but they don’t look like dreads. Not like yours, anyway.” I said, now envying the fact that I had not met the genie that makes twists magically transform into dread locks.

“It’s because they are loose twists.”

“Ohh, really?” I said, realization dawning on me. And then I remembered that I don’t know what loose twists are. “What are loose twists?” I asked, unashamed about my ignorance.

So this stranger-turned-instant-friend-thanks-to-natural-hair explained how to do loose twists, and added that it would take lesser amount of time since the number of torsions will be fewer. I was so enthralled that I decided to try it the next weekend.

After making loose twists on a section of my hair, I looked into the mirror. It was really pretty, fat and puffy, but the shrinkage was realer than real. My medium length hair which already shrinks shrunk even further, but I wasn’t bothered since length was what I had to sacrifice for the dreadlocks look I craved for.

The hair was really cool. It was those kinds of hairstyles that look finer as they get older.

Three weeks later, it was time for take down. As usual, I wet my twists a bit, and got ready to untwist. Lo and behold, the hair refused to untwist. I tried root to tip, tip to root, add more water+oil, gentle finger detangling, every trick in the world, but it yielded nothing. It was taking me about 20 minutes to undo a single twist. This twist had meshed tighter than a woven african raffia basket, and I was almost losing it.

Source

I knew if I continued that way, one week later, I would still be untwisting, so I just took a conditioner, and soaked my hair in it, just to untwist. I heard my hair stands snapping and breaking by the second. After about 2 hours, I was done. It was not funny at all.

My stranger friend only told me the good side of loose twists, and that was that it was beautiful and made your hair look like dreads. She did not tell me loose twists meant 90% shrinkage. She didn’t tell me not to carry that style for over 1 week, and that carrying it for three weeks would result in this suffer head. I know loose twists is beautiful, but no way am I sacrificing my hair for beauty. I also think anyone who classifies it as a protective style should be hanged.

If I ever meet my stranger friend in the bus again, I will be sure to rip her loose twists off after giving her a piece of my mind.

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