I really like the culture surrounding hair/head wrapping in Africa. Where I live, though, it's more common to see a woman with a shower cap on than a woman with a head wrap.
If I'm going to be honest, and get some hate for it, I'd rather see someone with a head wrap than with a shower cap. I know how to do a basic head covering, but not to the scale and elegance of the African tradition. Before looking into this, I had no idea that there were so many different ways to do wrap your head around doing a head wrap.
(okay, okay, no more puns, I promise...)
When colonialism took over in Africa, along with slavery and a long list of other awful, terrible things that should have never done to any group regardless of skin color, whites began trying to enforce their views on to the Africans. If you live in America, you know all about how Muslim/Islamic/Arabic women who wear full religious gear are frowned upon by the general public. Basically, the same principle was applied to Africans - covering your head was
bad. (Note: yes, some Africans wear Muslim gear, but not
all of Africa was colonized by Arabia.) Beauty was blonde, long hair that never gets tangled or messy and is as straight as a stick. Even though Christians get away with having nuns covered head to toe, that's different because she's devoted herself to God unlike you other people who don't have the palest of the pale skin. So African slaves were taught that it was bad to cover your hair and that you should dump a bunch of chemicals on your head instead so that it's straight like the white man's wife.
Every region of Africa has its own headgear and thus its own name for its headgear.
South Africa - Doek
 |
| South African TV presenter Bonang Matheba with a doek [source] |
Malawi/ Zimbabwe – Dhuku
Malawi/Ghana - Duku
Botswana - Tukwi
I found those three to be commonly lumped together with no clear examples of differences between them.
Of course, there are many other variations under many different names depending on the region. From what I know, African American women tend to do a more modernized variation of head wrapping. There are
thousands of tutorial videos and articles you can find on good ol' Google.
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