Hydrating Afro with Coconut Oil

For the past two weeks, I didn't comb my hair at all. In the mornings I sprayed it with a mixture of water and castor oil, then applied Shea butter leave in conditioner. I had never done this before and am not sure why I let laziness get the better of me.  In this period I thought giving the hair moisture would protect it but I ignored/forgot that the hair would tangle even more and now realise (in retrospect) that I was somewhat delusional to think I wasn't damaging my hair. Guess what I discovered today on my wash day? A lot of breakage and knots, grrrrr!

Anyway, no use crying over spilt milk. So I performed a deep hydrating treatment using coconut oil. Here is the Coconut story and a picture:

Why coconut oil?

• Coconut oil is able to penetrate the hair shaft and fully hydrate your hair because of its light density. Oils that are heavy simply give your hair a shiny glowing look when in reality the hair is dry inside. Other light oils are Avocado oil and Olive oil. 
• Coconut oil doesn't easily evaporate from your hair and therefore helps your hair stay hydrated/moisturised for longer
• The oil is good for conditioning your hair, softening it, preventing dandruff and keeping the hair strong and less brittle.

Method I followed

• Washed my hair and dried it with a T-shirt
• Smeared/smothered the oil on my hair
• The oil looks solid, don't panic, when you place it on your hands it melts from the natural heat of your body temperature
• Applied a plastic cap, then wrapped my hair in my heat wrap (heat accelerates the rate at which the oil penetrates the hair shafts). Think of it this way, if you put sugar in cold water it will dissolve after some lengthy time but if you put it in hot water it melts in few seconds! 
• I stayed with the heat for 30 mins, washed off the oil (must be a thorough wash), then conditioned and sealed in moisture with other products because my hair is super dry. I'll blog about a detailed wash day explaining the process of conditioning and sealing in moisture in more detail. 
• Applied heat protection then blow dried my hair using the tension method. Will explain the tension method of blow drying in a separate post.

Happy healthy hair! Team Natural Hair! Team African Afro!

Length check end Dec 2014

On this day, I had a normal hair wash day, followed by a hydrating and protein treatment, then a length check as per attached picture. 

Why did I transition from relaxed to natural

Most naturalistas have a higher order calling to growing natural hair, some sort of super inspirational reason as their motive, but mine was purely out of a disastrous hair encounter. The story goes.......

I used to relax my hair and if I recall properly, my sister started relaxing my hair when I was 10 years old. Before then my mom had kept my hair in its natural state and for this I would like to say "ke a leboga mama", i.e. thank you mum! I'm glad my mom didn't burn my scalp with  relaxers like most moms do to poor little toddlers!

But back to the main point, I had relaxed hair until 2009, in April that year I cut my hair really short and got what we refer to as a bob cut. The decision to cut my hair was purely to try something new, I was bored of my long relaxed hair. However when my hair grew longer I decided to do a blow out as I had noticed I usually braided my hair and only ever wore it out for 2 days to a week when it was relaxed, so there really was no need to keep burning my scalp through relaxers when in reality I kept my hair in braids all the time. FYI a blow out is a form of texlaxing hair, i.e. using chemical to process the hair to become 'straight' while keeping the curly/rough texture of the natural hair coil.

In May 2011 for the entire month I would wash my hair every 2 days and straighten it with a hair straightener. Unknown to me was the damage I was causing my hair through the heat Then in June 2011 I plaited my hair to soft dread and kept it until August. Beginning of August I removed the braids and to my surprise my hair fell off! Initially I thought it was just a portion of the head that was damaged, but no matter how gentle I was in removing the braids my hair was falling off from the roots! It finally hit me once I got done that I had an entirely bald head! I cried and slept my sorrows off, the next day I went to the salon to trim the minute hair shafts that were left to the same length and rocked what we refer to as a brush cut for a month. After a month I got a weave and started growing purely natural hair, no blow out and no excessive heat. Since September  2011 I stayed natural, till today! That is my story!

Team Natural Hair! Team Healthy African Afro!

Pre-weave treatment for my Afro

Being on a healthy hair journey (hhj) means even before I get a weave woven onto my hair I have to care for the hair underneath, i.e. my natural hair. So before plaiting my hair and getting the weave at the hair salon, I treat my hair.

This time I was planning to have the Brazilian weave for  3weeks, so I treated my hair with ORS Hair Mayonaisse and Dark & Lovely Hair masque. The mayonnaise is a strong protein treatment that I use once every 2 weeks due to its strength, one could use a light protein treatment such as the ORS Olive Oil Replenishing Pak (however the latter is necessary to use once a week as it is a light protein treatment); and the Hair masque provided a good moisture treatment that would hydrate my hair while under the weave.

As I write this post, I am supposed to be on my third week of rocking the stylish weave but I did not last. Itchy scalp and dry hair were getting to me, plus the hot African sun doesn't make it easy to wear a weave when the temperature is 33 degrees! I removed the weave after 2 weeks as I missed my proper hair wash days, and was also worried about my hairline. As I start posting more, you guys will learn that I am obsessed about retaining a healthy hair line.

This entire week I haven't done much to my hair. After removing the weave I washed the hair and was lazy to treat it. So to minimize damage, the whole week I didn't comb nor brush the hair, just applied water and Shea butter leave in conditioner every morning then went to work.

Here are some pics of the treatment I made, the weave, then the uncombed hair I wore to work after the weave.
Team Natural hair! Healthy Natural hair! Healthy African Afro!

Basics of hair care

Growing up, I was frequently surrounded by comments that always shot down natural hair. A common phrase that was tossed at any young girl with natural hair was "dikgong tseo" or "dikgobe tsa moriri", loosely translated - "those pieces of  hard wood" or "those raw beans". Most of these comments were influenced by the common difficulties of managing natural hair, but since I began my healthy hair journey, I have realized that natural African hair CAN become soft and manageable. A different post on softening the hair will be posted later.

Now, for basics about natural hair, it is advisable to develop a regime. For example every night before you go to bed you brush your teeth and wash out your make up, that is a regime i.e. The routine to-do's before bed. In my view he following makes up a good hair regime:

1. Wash with shampoo (ideally sulfate free)
2. Condition the hair
3. Treat the hair
4. Style and look good in natural hair :-)

Description of the hair regime points above

1. Wash: avoid shampoos with sulfates (check the ingredients) because sulfates dry out hair. Dry hair is susceptible to breakage. You don't want your hair to break as this won't help in retaining the length you've grown.

My personal stance is wash hair once a week for an average lifestyle but for an active lifestyle (e.g. gym/sport) twice per week should be good.

•     Do not use circular movements when washing hair, this creates tangles/knots resulting in breakage.

•     Once you have rinsed out, detangle using your fingers. Your hair is stronger when wet, so this is the best time to detangle. 

•    Dry the hair using an old t-shirt (towels are too harsh on natural hair, they cause it to tangle).

2. Condition: condition your hair once you have detangled. This will help soften you hair. Preferably use a leave-in conditioner instead of a wash out one.

3. Treatments: there are 2 types of treatments, ones that hydrate the hair and ones that nourish the hair through protein. It is advisable to perform a hydrating treatment every week (once) and the nourishing protein treatment once bi-weekly.

Hydrating treatments may have words such as 'hydrate', 'mask' or  'condition' on them while protein treatments tend to have the word 'strengthen' on their labels.  You can also use natural coconut oil to hydrate hair, a post on this will follow later.

4. Any lady can look good in well nourished and cared for natural hair/ natural Afro, no matter the length! Enjoy your look and love yourself IN your hair.

Happy healthy hair! Happy moriri! Happy African Afro! TeamNaturalHair

When it all began.... Creating this blog

I started my healthy hair journey in May 2014, and since then a great passion for keeping my natural hair well nourished began. I'm sitting at a Cricket stadium in Newlands CapeTown, probably being namely 'silly woman at the cricket' due to my lack of concentration in the match. To be fair I am not much of a cricketer and am only here to enjoy watching SA batter (hopefully) West Indies with my husband and 'dad', as part of our holiday itinerary.

Last year my husband observed the intensity of the passion I held for healthy hair and natural hair, so he asked why I didn't start a blog to share my experiences and educate other ladies of whatever good knowledge I had accumulated since the start of my journey towards healthy hair,

So today, on the 02/01/2015, I sit here at the cricket and am writing my first post. Giving you background to how this blog was inspired. Thank you hubby, love you!!!!!