How to Treat Afro Hair at Home – with Nqobile
The Na Ha ZO team recently chatted to Nqobile and asks her a series of questions on how she cares for her hair at home.
Q & A session with Nqobile
At NaturalHairZone.com, we are serious about natural hair care for women and believe that natural hair care should be a priority for black women globally. The article below discusses Nqobile’s gorgeous head of hair.
Profile: Nqobile
Age: 19 Years
1. Tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m a first-year Engineering student at the University of Witwatersrand and one of the biggest natural hair enthusiasts alive, I swear.
I also believe that “natural hair” should be considered tautology for self-explanatory reasons (just a PSA).
I have relatively unconventional practices and perspectives regarding natural hair care and low-maintenance hair at home, so this questionnaire has some interesting answers.
2. What prompted you to go natural?
I’ve been natural my entire life. But I took the initiative to learn how to take care of my hair three years ago when I saw an old photo of what it looked like before the evident heat damage it suffered at the time.
So, I suppose it was the desire to restore my hair to its former glory.
{Are you enjoying our article on How to Treat Afro Hair at Home? We’d love to hear your comments below… Ed.}
3. What hair type are you, and how long is your hair?
Umm… Okay. Honestly speaking, I don’t quite believe in nor endorse the use of “hair types”, given their most popular connotation.
That being said, according to the annoyingly conventional understanding, I have a weird 4A-4B combo that I am ABSOLUTELY in love with.
And as for length, I haven’t trimmed in 6 months, and I’m trimming this weekend.
So I’m definitely losing some centimetres soon, but right now, the hair on the front of my head reaches my collarbone when stretched, and the hair at the back of my head reaches my chest under the same conditions.
I suppose that makes it medium?
4. How long have you been on the natural hair journey?
Three years..
{ Editor- Read more about starting out on your Natural Hair Journey }
5. Do you have a consistent regime? If yes, please share it with us.
The only thing I do consistently is wet my hair in the shower every second day and then coat it in a/an butter/oil mixture.
Everything else is done on a need basis. For this, I check my hair weekly to see if it needs anything from me. If so, I’ll attend to it; if not, I’ll leave it alone until the next check-up.
6. What are the top 2 hair products you cannot live without?
Coconut Oil, Aloe Vera Juice & Cocoa Butter. I know you asked for two, but I’m generous like that (like indecisive much?). I swear by this trio.
7. What is your No. 1 hair growth secret?
Avoid trimming at all costs. I’m kidding.
Scissors are friends.
Regarding long-term, sustainable results, it’s all about basics. Growing my knowledge and understanding of my hair and afro textured hair, in general, has made me realise that our hair honestly has a thing for simplicity.
Home Simplicity
The simpler and more tailored to you that your practices and products are, the better. Simplifying my hair care practices has honestly taken my length-retention game to another level.
Diet, exercise and overall health also play a massive role in natural hair growth (as in the generation of all the other bodily cells).
Everything else (your rice-waters, jbco, etc.) only works if you respond well to it and, lastly, while you’re using it.
Managing Crazes
This is great if you can stick with it for the rest of your life, but, in most cases, it’s only a matter of time (and impatience) before a natural moves from one craze to the next or adds these crazes to their routine which results in too much going on with their hair.
This was me for just over two years. If you don’t know your hair well enough (most people don’t), this does more damage than good and robs you of some growth time and precious inches.
Oh! And scalp messages. 🙂
8. What is your go-to protective style?
Medium-sized twists that I tie up into a bun.
Protect those ends at all costs, Queen. We both know they deserve all the attention and respect they require.
9. What major mistake(s)have you made on your natural hair journey?
Spending all that money and all that time (2 years) trying out all those trends without getting to know my hair first.
10. What have you learnt on your natural hair journey?
So much. I learnt how to love myself.
Deeply. I learnt that there is a lot I still have to discover and understand about myself.
I asserted my sense of identity as a black African woman and a product of a royal, resilient bloodline. I also learnt that there is no “one-size-fits-all” of any form. Most people have no idea what they are doing in life and rely on this continuous trial-and-error process. Growth isn’t linear.
I learnt that beauty isn’t all that subjective and that society doesn’t know why it has a lot of the prejudices that exist in it.
Hair is tangled in every facet of blackness!
That facts and advice from the internet can never beat the wealth of knowledge in a book, no matter how old. I learnt all of this and so much more through hair because, in reality, it’s not just hair.
Hair is too tangled in every facet of blackness to just be hair. This goes for both black men and women.
11. Bonus question. Who is your natural hair crush?
I’ve got 2: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is thickness and length goals!!!! And then there’s me on a good hair day.
I am my ultimate woman crush on a good hair day.
We’d love to get your comments below…
{ Ed. Other articles you may be interested in – Natural Hair Care for Kids, or read up dealing with Thinning Natural Hair }
