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| Wig on display. Photo Credit: Alibaba |
“When we gather together
in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see
it in his compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.”
That is what the
legendary wizard of literature, Chinua Achebe, tells us in his renowned novel Things
Fall Apart. At the end of the year 2013, my childhood friend travelled from
America – where he has sought academic asylum – to be with his family and
friends. It was certainly not the case that he could not have seen the moon’s
light in his base at Virginia. Rather, it was for the sake of get-together.
Whenever we meet, we do
not merely talk of the fact that we are growing old but of the responsibilities
that come with ageing as well. We are nearing our 30s and marriage – like the
suffering that knocks at one’s door when you tell it there is no seat for her,
tells you not to worry because it brought its stool – stares at our faces. If
you had ever seen a sanitary inspector fixedly looking at the bottom of a
barrel filled with water, you would understand what I mean here. Family and
friends are asking: “When are you marrying?”
But aside from the azonto-weddings
that today’s Ghanaian woman is eager to embroil around her neck, a number of
factors push young men like me and my friend to coil into our shells. The young
Ghanaian woman (some) longing to be a White African – bleaching, shaving of the
eyebrow, elongating their nails, lips painting and devastating enough, the
wearing of wigs! Was it not in the news recently that a very dark woman, we all
know, had turned into a white woman after claiming she used I hear common “cocoa
buttercream”?
Unlike cunning Kwaku
Ananse who would carry all the world’s wisdom on his protruding belly, I would
like to zoom in on only one of the aforementioned factors by carrying it at my
back for discussion. Ladies, kindly relax and read; I have no intention of “al-Shabaab”
you with verbal bullets.
Tell me, why do you wear
wigs? How do you feel about it? Do you have any idea what you look like when in
it? Well, some look nice on some heads. But as to whether it fits your head or
not, wigs have some serious spiritual backgrounds that I think if you had
known, you would have discarded it to the dustbin.
This is what the “020/0244
pastors” won’t tell you. They are in for your money and not your salvation. Why
not put aside the “I am highly favoured” mentality and follow the subsequent
lines in sober reflections.
Come on.
Looking through the historical
window, records have it that by 1580, syphilis – a sexually transmitted disease
– had become one of the worst epidemics to strike Europe. William Clowes, an
English surgeon, described the number of syphilis patients who clogged London’s
hospitals as an “infinite multitude.” It is recorded that without antibiotics
by then, victims of the disease suffered; nasty rashes, blindness, open sores,
and hair loss.
Long hair was a trendy
status symbol in society. With those who had the ‘Lord to be their barber,’
battling baldness was as painful as though been told to squeeze water out of a
rock. The syphilis epidemic, partly, fueled the surge in wig making. Historians
referred to wigs made for the bald as a shameful necessity. You see, the craze
to have hair on one’s head did not start with Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney.
Away from the syphilis
canker, at age 17, Louis XIV (1638 – 1715), the King of France sprung on his
feet with the agility of a leopard and commanded 48 wig makers to save his
image. What image? The desire to maintain his hair on his head. Five years
later, the King of England, Charles II, is also reported to have emulated
Louis’ hair restoration. Does that sound interesting?
The history of wigs
continues unabated. In this 21st century, I am yet to spot a
descendant of Eve who is growing bald. I think finding a naturally bald woman
would be as scarce as meeting a lady in her prime in our modern Ghana. Perhaps,
such a lady might be suffering from such hair loss related sicknesses. So,
again, women, why do you wear wigs?
My colleague, Mavis
Boamah – a level 200 student at the Ghana Institute of Journalism – will attempt
to find answers as to why our women are lovers of wigs these days.
Hello there, I’m Mavis
and I am taking a stroll through one of the principal streets of Accra. Here,
at one shoulder of the street, pedestrian malls stand like bullfrogs in a
swamp. Solomon, feet are stepping on feet and heads knocking heads as passersby
struggle their way through this chocked lane.
On my immediate left is a
metallic store, a little bigger than the size of a lotto kiosk, filled to the
brim with cosmetics. In the store are mannequins head-geared in wigs and weaves.
Women, old and young, either troop in and out of the store or steal a glance at
the mannequins on tenterhooks.
Felicity is a 25-year-old
woman. I ask her why the craze for wigs. “Well for me, it adds up to my beauty.
Strange enough, whether it’s the bride or the corpse in a wig, the product
electrifies their beauty.”
For Bernice and her
friend Abigail, both nurses, “wearing of wigs does not only save one’s hair
from breaking off but it cuts down the cost of going to the salon every week.”
From what I have gathered so far, Solomon, wigs are but just another twist of
fashion.
Wigs come in different
forms with various names. The human hair such as the Brazilian hair and other
many synthetic ones; the wig caps and the hair braids. But from where do we get
these wigs? Sources such as Obediah Amankwah – on YouTube, affirm how human
hairs are sacrificed to gods at Hindu temples, in India. These hairs are later
packaged to countries such as ours for sale to our women whom we take for
wives. The most dangerous thing about the sale of these hairs is that most of
the worshippers who donated their hairs to their gods do not know that their
religious leaders later sell them out.
India is not the only
country noted for either sacrificing human hair to gods or selling such hairs.
In many other countries including Peru, one’s hair could be sold in other to
afford a meal.
Owing to this, whenever I
see a lady in a wig; whether human hair or synthetic, I jerk my head sharply
like an animal that has sniffed death in the air. As a lady, I know that what
gets most men attracted to us is seeing our buttocks wriggle – like worms – in
our skirts or trousers. Whereas our hair is of great value to us, most men these
days prefer our natural hairs to wigs.
As it stands, the average
Ghanaian men – like my friend Solomon and his friend– marrying the wig-wearing ladies
will only amount to marrying “Indian gods”.
Solomon
Mensah is a freelance journalist and Mavis Boamah is a student-journalist at
the Ghana Institute of Journalism.
Writers’
emails: nehusthan4@yahoo.com & boamahmavis@ymail.com
