Stirring the natural hair movement
Whether it is springy, poofy, or frizzy, Patricia Wanjala, Founder of Tricia’s Naturals, East Africa’s largest natural hair online community, is teaching women how to love, maintain, style and beautify hair
When her daughter was two years old, Patricia Wanjala, founder of Tricia’s Naturals, felt the urge to switch to natural hair. Her desire was to train her daughter to love her African heritage.
Patricia had had a stint with natural hair while she was studying business administration in the United States 14 years ago, but a negative comment from her black American host made her relax her hair.
“She told me that my hair looked like Pickaninny’s, a North American historical racial slur, which referred to a dark-skinned child of African descent characterised by unkempt hair.
This unsettled me and I went ahead to relax my hair. It was long, soft and shiny, but I immediately regretted the decision. Salons in the US are expensive and I lacked the skills to style natural hair,” narrates the natural hair enthusiast.
New fad
As she admits, the move to go back natural was challenging at first since she had no knowledge of taking care of her hair and there were no local products available.
“I figured that if I was suffering, other women must have also been struggling. I contributed about natural hair in a magazine and some of the issues raised by readers became the topic of my articles as well,” she says.
Rocking natural hair is presently the new fad in town. With this boom, a number of blogs, vlogs, websites, books as well as Facebook pages have emerged to connect natural hair enthusiasts and assist them share their experiences as well as find solutions to issues pertaining their hair.
Tricia’s Naturals wa founded in 2009 with the aim of offering natural hair solutions to those who sought for advice.
“My fellow group admins and I provide reliable, expert advice for the natural hair community. We help solve the beauty and hair problems for women who seek to embrace a more holistic way of living,” Tricia explains.
This labour of love, as she calls it, began as a Facebook support group for a few women with natural hair issues and has now grown to over 200,000 on their combined social media pages.
Through live video streaming and articles, they also teach their members every Friday on matters hair and healthy living. On top of how to handle natural hair, they opted to add psychological coaching as well as wellness advice inside the private group.
“Hair is not just what grows on your head, it’s also attached to self-esteem issues. That’s why the black woman spends more cash on hair than any other race.
That’s why people going natural require extra support as they are turning away from Western looking hair and that takes a lot of courage,” she says.
Running the page
Tricia’s Naturals Facebook page is run by highly qualified admins who have spent thousands of hours researching, reading books and travelling to attend seminars to be trained on natural hair, skincare, wellness, health and even psychology or cognitive behavioural therapy.
Each of the admins; Jay Cee, Vikki Kagai, Evie Dondi, Shirley Bee, Naomi Nasinyari, Gathoni Marisa and Jackie Marura are naturalistas with different types of hair in advanced stages of their journeys and their shared goal is to give their experience and time in helping those who wish to embrace a healthier, more natural lifestyle.
“We do not discriminate against people who choose to relax their hair, nor do we make them feel like they should change. Hair is a very personal decision, hence we give advice on how to care for healthy natural hair,” she says.
In addition, there are reputable members who are renowned in the community as bearers of trustworthy advice. For instance, they accept the counsel that bloggers, vloggers as well as veteran naturalistas share within the groups.
However, even with the counsel, they caution members to be careful and ask them to always seek professional assistance. They also vet persons who seek to be members of the group thoroughly for credibility purposes.
“We spend so many hours checking out the people who desire to get into our page. We check their Facebook pages and we block those who seem suspicious.”
But this action has not gone without resistance as some of the blocked persons have spread bad reports about the group to other pages. This makes the admins vigilant, always checking out pages and deleting negative remarks.
Growing movement
Going natural has made women discover and embrace their true inner beauty. African women have learned how to love themselves unconditionally without ascribing to Western standards previously imposed on them.
Though it has been a bumpy journey at Tricia’s Natural movement, they have managed to forge strong friendships with each other and also other naturalistas online.
Out of the group arose entrepreneurs, influencers, bloggers and vloggers and others who have grown to fill the natural hair styling skin and hair care niche.
This birthed a desire for an event that would bring about all naturalistas both in the group and outside. Tricia’s Natural Hair, Health and Beauty Festival is slated for November 30, 2019 and will be the largest natural hair, beauty and wellness festival in East Africa.
It will be a celebration of sisterhood and will also mark the 10th anniversary since this movement was created.
“All of these women share a common bond, one which is impossible to fill just by online interaction. This demand for face to face meetups led to successful events held by groups that arose from ours, including Kurly Diaries and Nurtured Knotts.
As the larger umbrella community, our goal is to bring all these and many other individuals together, along with stakeholders such as beauty and hair brands, educators and entertainers,” explains Tricia.
