AMAA 2012 - The Beginning

After jumping up and down and screaming, I composed myself and started wondering what to wear. Most importantly: how am I going to style my hair? I had just been told that I got free tickets to attend the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA). Yeah I know it is not the Oscars, so say what you like o, me I was psyched.

My ticket: "Regular Single" means we sat up, up (Nose bleeds section LOL)

Of course I was going to use the opportunity to go Napp hunting! I was interested to see how many other natural haired women I would encounter at the event. Surely after Viola Davis rocked the red carpet at the Oscars with her TWA (Teeny Weeny Afro), I could expect to see some natural haired ladies rocking it at the AMAAs. The next post will talk about that - right now it is about my hair.

I decided on a textured afro. Hmmm! What is that right? It is either a twist-out or braid-out or coil-out or Bantu knot-out that is styled into an afro. So it is not your regular normal afro. I dampened my hair with some water and twisted my hair in chunky twists. I used gel for hold: I knew that I was going to be moving about and would probably sweat so I wanted to get maximum hold and longevity and definition. I also put Bantu knots on the tips of each twist so that my ends would curl up a bit. Check out this blog post for more details. I did all this the night before and planned to take out the twists only when I was ready to dress up for the event. 24 hours should be enough time for my hair to dry and set.

Chunky twists with Bantu knots at the tips

Time to get ready! I took out the twist and quite liked the way my hair turned out. The definition was nice. I brushed in one side and was ready to go.

Some texture accomplished and my ends were curled and not straight.

Smile of satisfaction

Look ehn Lagos can be hot and humid even at night! Within about 2 hours my definition was puffing out and my textured 'Fro was turning into a "not-so-textured-fro". I mean come on! *frustrated tone here* What must I do to keep definition in this Lagos? Maybe I should have done smaller twists: not micro but smaller. Maybe I should have picked out the Afro more so that it was bigger and would have shrunk instead of loosing the definition. Thoughts.

So here is what my hair looked like at the end of the night. Trust me, that ain't no textured 'Fro! But one of the awesome things about being natural is that anything can be turned into a hairstyle. It was the not-so-textured 'Fro that got the most compliments! Figure that one out! *Cheesing*

Left: Textured 'Fro at the beginning. Right: Cousin of the textured 'Fro at the end

Keep it natural!

Omozo