Even though I grew up in a variety of African countries, I had never gotten my hair braided before because a. I had heard it was painful, b. it's really time-consuming, and c. it always seemed too touristy. But last week I was finally convinced it would be a good idea, so my roommate, Natalie, and I decided to get it done.
Last Friday was a rainy, do-nothing sort of day, so Natalie and I mustered up all our bravery and walked down the street to “La Puissance Divine d'Amour Tresseur”- The Divine Power of Love Hair Salon- where we spent the next 6 hours in excruciating pain. If you've never been through this process, but want to have an idea of how it feels, take a small section of your hair, about a centimeter in diameter, and then yank on it as hard as possible, until it feels like you're going to remove it from your scalp. Keep pulling on it for about a minute, maintaining that same level of force, and then select a section of hair next to it that's the same size and repeat that same action on it. Continue this systematically until you've done it to all your hair, which should take you about 5 or 6 hours. And make sure you stay in the same chair the entire time, and try not to move around too much. By the end you should have a headache, your scalp and your butt should be incredibly sore, you should be somewhat dehydrated, you should be exhausted, and you may want to cry. And while you're doing it, remind yourself that there are countless women all over Africa voluntarily submitting themselves to a similar torture for the sake of fashion.
After the braids were finished the pain faded pretty quickly, and I had to admit I liked the feeling of not having to worry about my hair. This was fairly unfortunate, because since we had gotten our hair done in twists instead of standard braids, and my hair is so short and smooth, and the hair dressers hadn't done a very good job, it started coming out of the twists the next day. By Sunday it was looking pretty bad, and Natalie's was too, so we removed the extensions, and a couple days later we decided we enjoyed having the extensions so much that we would go through the entire process again, but getting normal braids this time, and having someone else do a better job. Round two was much more pleasant, since not only did the hair dresser actually came to our house, but she didn't handle our scalps so brutally.
So now I have black and purple braids, and while I prefer the look of my natural hair, this is still pretty fun, and I don't have to worry about how it looks when I get up in the morning, after I ride a moto/scooter, when I get caught in the rain, etc.I keep getting comments about how beautiful and Béninois my hair looks, so maybe I was wrong about it being touristy. But my suspicions about it being painful and time-consuming were definitely accurate.
Looking as Béninoise as possible with my dress and hair:
Natalie, my fellow braid veteran, and me:
hahahaha! black hair! i got brown extensions.
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