Rites of Passage

In Jamaica, at about age 10 or 11 a child could be eligible for and actually enters high school or the secondary education system. I suspect that this tradition is not peculiar to Yard alone, throughout the Caribbean there are territories whose educational systems have retained the British influence in the way they teach their young which adhere to same. Needless to say that because of the prevalence of this event, certain showings of “maturity” are also linked to that leap from childlike existence to budding young adulthood which I’m sure are uniform enough in their observance throughout the region, to make them rites of passage.

Enough big talk, in the Guys it’s the change from short pants to trousers and in the girls it’s when they get their hair “creamed”!! Because I can’t attest to the significance of the change to long pants although I’m sure its great, I’m going to speak about the “creaming” of the hair – so called in my day as a direct reference to that noxious vat begetting a white creamy mixture of stuff that goes on the hair of the woman of African descent in order to straighten it. - I have a whole other story of when I went away to college in D.C. and went into a foreign hairdresser’s salon for the first time and told her I wanted my hair creamed and hearing her say “permed” and being convinced that a perm was the stuff that was placed in the hair of the other folks to make it curly – insisting that my hair needed to be creamed - the hairdresser acceding to my demands charging me $15.00 more for what I now know is a perm – but I digress.

You know if you see a little girl on her last day of elementary school in Jamaica with her braids or plaits you would not dream that she would become this new person with vavoom hair at the end of summer. And rest assured that the do is not just decorative, but it serves as a transitionary bridge in that young lady’s household too, because hair that formerly needed a mother or someone else with an amount of manual dexterity to tame, could hence be handled by the owner and thus freeing up getting ready time for other tasks. Nary one mother in fact a generation of caregivers find themselves rejoicing on that first day of school after receiving the gift of some unaccustomed me time in the morning.

And then our girl goes to school and flashes. For the first time, the elements can actually move the hair, it blows in the wind, the texture is different, the color has changed, she wants to run and let it flow but since she has a modicum of decorum she resists the urge. However if anyone asks her to do anything she is going to run – because she got it like that!!! Curlers, hair spray, split ends and hair dryers now come into play. Our princess has to learn how to set her hair at night and sleep in torture devices that she only saw her mother use previously - through the night without having them arraying her pillow anon, she now knows that her head sweats at night, humidity becomes a much discussed element amongst her peers of hairdo getters, things change. She carries a comb, brush, hair pins and a mirror where formerly there was none, she goes to the hairdresser every six weeks or more often than that dependant on he whom doles out the cash for a touch up, lets not even mention the scabs in her head from where the stuff stayed too long!!!

Not everyone gets the new do at the beginning of the school year. Those poor souls are subject to the tittering amongst their friends and their mother saying, “if they really were your friends they would not laugh!” Yeah right mother your girl just missed the boat and the others will not let her forget it. But when that swan with the recalcitrant mother finally gets her do she has the most beautiful mane of them all and much to her glee she finds the painful wait on maturity had some benefits.

Reviewing all these traditions makes me wonder about my two girls and I know I am going to be a swan mother because I now know that the avoidance of the vat is best for our beautiful black tresses. But because I did not grow up in this system I am not certain when the onslaught of do requests will become an issue but I am prepared to dig my heels in. I know that if I can survive up to age sixteen with the hair undone, they will start to embrace their naturale beauty and appreciate it for itself not to mention harness creativity and ingenuity as they seek to find different ways of jazzing it up. Wish me luck!!! Maybe by that time I can begin a new rite of passage starting with my eldest and an afro comb!