Dreadlocks in South Africa

I have had dreadlocks for 6 years now. I started them when I was here studying abroad. I had shaved my head since it was something I always wanted to do, and as it was growing back, I thought, hey, I'm in Africa why not get dreadlocks? So I went to a hair salon and asked them to make me some dreadlocks. What they did to my 3-4 inch hair was to put it into clumps and put wax all over them. What I ended up with was a head full of wax, and it was quite painful. I was assured that when my hair grew, it would grow dreaded. This wasn't the case and my hair just got nasty. So I went to another salon, this time in the township accompanied by my boyfriend at the time who translated for me what I wanted. They said, oh, this was done all wrong! But then what they did was to pull apart the big clumps of wax and clump my hair into smaller clumps of wax. He did tell me to rub my hair and head with a wool sweater or towel and this would tangle the hair. This worked and small dreads started to form. Once back in the States I learned about metal combs and backcombing the hair and rolling it and this excellerated the process. It was 2 years before it looked like I had dreadlocks. Lots of work.

I didn't know this before, but dreadlocks mean something in South Africa. It's not simply a hairstyle, but they are associated with rastafarianism and rebellion. I don't know a lot about rastafarianism, but dreadlocks, reggae music, and smoking massive amounts of marijuana are often associated with it (this isn't what it is actually about). Nearly every day as I walk around here in Cape Town someone greets me because of my hair. With some groups of people, having dreadlocks means having instant respect, I'm suddenly in some underground network of people without even knowing it. I don't try to explain to people I am not a rasta, I just go along with it. It's easier that way, and it's kind of fun.

I often get called "rasta" and at a heath food shop the other day I was looking at the shelves and the guy at the shop said "Hi rasta, how are you rasta? Can I help you rasta?" He was really friendly, and gave me his number, the number of his reggae DJ friend, names of clubs playing reggae, and said he could hook me up with marijuana, any kind I wanted, just give him a call. I get offered to buy marijuana a lot because of the dreadlocks, and I thought how different things are here, that even though marijuana is illegal, a guy working at a health food store so blatantly offers it to me. In the States, in Portland, people don't offer marijuana to me on the streets. I think even though I have dreadlocks people can tell I don't smoke. I have found smoking marijuana changes the energy field and makes it all wobbly. Like a Malawian guy staying at the backpackers we were at. He is nearly stoned all the time, and his energy field is compressed and wobbly.

I have noticed two things seem to be big here that I didn't expect: rastafarianism and followers of Osho (more on Osho another time). I am on a quest to find out why rastafarianism is so popular here. It's more than just smoking lots of dagga (local term for marijuana), because they could just be pot heads and not consider themselves to be rastas. I've talked to a few people about it, but haven't gotten the key yet. My hunch is that it has something to do with African pride (Haile Selassie an important guy in the philosophy was the Emperor of Ethiopia), and an idea of unity and love. Although I hear people talk about this "love" I haven't met anyone embodying it. That wouldn't make the philosophy wrong, I certainly don't meet many people following different religions who embody their faith either.