UNWARRANTED COURSE

They force your legs open, threaten you not to move nor make a sound, at times they hold a weapon to you or sometimes you may not feel anything or you would be conscious to feel everything that is happening or go in and out of consciousness until it’s over! They are not gentle during this course; the violation, the guilt, the shame- the ordeal! Sometimes it takes minutes, for others days or years. For some it’s perpetrated by an individual, others get a gang. Some are instigated by relatives, friends or strangers. Then comes the chronologists who give their unsolicited opinions and poor investigative reports on the reason it happened: Oh it must be how they dressed, the people they hang around with, they walked during odd hours, they had a poor upbringing or were not raised right and the one that drives the nail in – they asked for it, Ha!Sober or intoxicated, no one likes to be forced into doing something that they don’t want, don’t know or are not prepared for. Why do people force themselves on a conversation, a dress or relationships; relating to this topic - Why do people force their bodies on other people’s body or force items into other people’s crouches. I know what you are thinking at this point, “The topic should have been FORCE”, I won’t force you, though. A little advise before we go on, Do Not Force Issues!They say a problem shared is a problem half solved: How do you tell this story to someone else hoping they understand what you are going through? Will they offer a shoulder to cry on or will they judge? You may still ask, what made you deserve it? It is usually not easy to relive that moment. The comments on the situation make it harder, more so when the victim feels like they are to blame. They do not want your pity either this course cannot be undone. Rest assured, the pain will go away, the scars may never fade, the memory still remains but days go by and one has to live hoping for better experiences, not to erase the nightmares but to birth a new agenda. If you have experienced forced intercourse or any kind of sexual assault, do not despair, you can get through it. Do not beat yourself up, do not be in a hurry either because it takes time. And time is important to heal, to trust and to love again. Learn to love yourself, most importantly forgive yourself; cliché but all true. Trust the process, those scars will seem as beauty marks, eventually. Do not force healing. Do not force forgetting. Do not force forgiveness. These will all be gifts that will be presented to you during the course of life. So don’t give up, don’t be afraid of taking the journey or facing the demons. Those bruises will make sense one day since they sculpture you to touch another person and guide them to rise through the ashes into beauty. The course doesn’t have to be aligned, but it makes the process worthwhile.

Entangling the coils

The hairy situation gets out of hand when the volume is too much to handle. Have you gone to the hair salon and the attendant feels your hair and says they can’t deal with it? Well, I have, believe me I cried all the way to the next salon which was about 300 meters away. But I arrived at the second hair hospital, explained to the attendant that my hair is quite course and tangled, asked if she can manage it and she told me to sit in the chair where she tried her best to entangle the situation in an hours’ time. Granted I do not know how to maintain the crown on my head, because it gets easily entangled and the growth becomes so bushy that many combs have broken attending to the natural head insulation. Let us shift focus on my grooming skills and let me discuss how uncouth some hair dressers are. I heard of a story, not hair related but let me share it; A sick person went to the hospital and found someone dressed in a white lab coat and assumed them to be a doctor so the patient went ahead to disclose to the ‘doctor’ of her ailments, who went ahead to prescribe drugs. You know how the story ends, the medication did not work. Can you relate? You walk into an institution expecting to get your issues sorted but they give you a misdiagnosis or others start passing you around from one desk to another where you explain your misfortune over and over again and at the end of the day you get little or no assistance. When someone opens an institution to offers services but encounter a professional challenge, how do you respond to it? If it’s beyond your expertise.

Back to my hair story, the first hairdresser went about asking me to comb it-myself, help her do the job am paying for, asking to add more money claiming to use other chemicals, claiming how it is taking up too much of other clients’ time and telling the colleagues how impossible it is to deal with it. This crashed my spirit, almost cursing the woman whom I inherited from and questioning why I was gifted this bunch of non-synthetic strands. It hurts while combing, plaiting and braiding, but it hurts the most when someone who does not know how it feels makes a mockery of the situation, giving unwarranted advice or scolding you like a child. Believe me it’s a blessing to have a full hairline leaving the forehead with little room to fit in the eyebrows. It is a greater blessing to find an individual who understand what it takes to keep this hair straight. We have a narrative that hair salons promote gossip by discussing a client who just left or celebrity affairs, but most people will get a bad hair-do, not confront the stylist and leave the premises disappointed. It is hard to reverse the remarks and treatment gotten from the hair specialist who see their clients as lazy beings who would rather pay them than break a sweat to run our fingers through the coils.

Speaking on behalf of all the hard-haired ladies everywhere, to the salon workers, ‘We need tender care while dealing with our heads, I hope we are not asking for much, please stop judging and discriminating our kind, treat us like other customers even though we take much of your time and energy’.