Dress To Express: Proudly African Accessories

I have a serious addiction to earrings.  Some women need to put on some sort of makeup to be able to get out of the house.  Some need to comb their hair.  For me, I need to put on my jewelry.  My watch, my rings and earrings and I am good to go or I feel naked.  And the moment I get home I have to take them off because I feel like I need to shed the weight of the world outside.  Shakalala-ed hair can be concealed under a hat or a bandana and quite frankly I love sleep too much so only give enough room for showering and dressing.  Extra fiddling on a daily basis is too much for me.  When I was a kid I would sleep with my braids tied so when I woke up for school in the morning all I had to do was brush the top.  I know, I should be ashamed.  I am not. It was cold at boarding school, I don't function well under 25 degrees Celcuis. And my mother was not around he he he ;}...

I however, do believe you should dress to express.  And for me, the best way to keep in touch with my African-ness is through jewelry, particularly earrings.  As LOLZ said recently when we were donning African outfits for my graduation that sometimes we Afropolitans can rock the African too much. Chitenge bag, necklace, earrings can be overkill, I admit.  But I like to rock my earrings, if nothing else, especially seeing as for some reason people back home tend to shun these items, thinking they are are only for tourists at the market and would rather adorn themselves with (better) Western accessories.  That is evidence of colonisation of the mind I think.  If beads and wood were good enough for my ancestors, they are good enough for me.  If we do not support our local artisans and our culture in turn, who will?!  My OLDEST FRIEND commented that my earring style exposes my chongololo-ness (meaning centi/milipede and also refers to kids who go abroad to boarding school).  Perhaps my need to connect with my African-ness has something to do with it.  So I make a concerted effort to make sure that my earring diversity includes solid African representation as it grows. 

I also like the fact that I can get beautiful earrings for a $1-2 and necklaces for $5-6 after bargaining and I get compliments on them, with people believing they are worth so much more. And lovely friends who have gotten me accessories from Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa as far as I know. This is in keeping with my dress code:

Fashion is in the now and ephemeral but style is priceless and eternal.

I have also found a way to get pretty cheap $5-6 earrings from Tar-jay, many of which look like they were made at home. They could have been, although they most probably were made in India or China.I was able to get shell earrings for £1 from Primani that look like they are from home.  I recently bought a pair of yellow shell earrings from Santa Barbara and saw the same green shell earrings I put together myself from Dubai ready-made in the shop! (The shells had a eye added to them already so only needed earring hooks which are very easy to add so I really didn't do much).    Shell earrings are an easy way to get the "exotic" natural "ethnic" look from afar, grrr to those words grrrr, which also leads people to believe that they are from home (apart from the fact that I come from a completely landlocked country is besides the point :}). And I think this is the main deterrent for people who are susceptible to inquiries and observations using "words that should be banned" when they dress a certain way.  This is why for the longest time I could not wear animal print anything -  too much for me to try and wear normally without the stigma of the "tribal" and/ or the skanky.  Now I can do a splash with my leather snake skin flats and a coupla earrings with leopard and zebra-stripes.  I am proud of my transcendence of the stereotype in an acceptable fashion he he he...

OXFORD SHIRT came up with this awesome way of creating easy access/ viewing of your collection for quick selection and matching with outfit purposes.  A great use for the excess cloth pieces from African outfits that every African woman possesses and never knows what to do with because they are too small or too big to do anything practical with.  However, you DO NOT put your expensive/family heirloom/ sentimental/ if-it-were-stolen-you'd-have-a-coronary jewelry on display. Nothing up on my wall was more than $10 so even though I am greatly attached to all my jewelry, I can get over the loss as I have many a time when I have lost an earring while out and about (why is it that you only ever lose ONE?!). This is when you go to Claire's and get a pack of those plastic earring backs to curb the problem.  And you stop living in London because coats and the wind repeatedly collude to dislodge earrings.

N.B. This only works in America, where they are allergic to building with brick and use something called dry wall that is soft enough to be able to push pins into in a haphazard manner to form a pretty earring wall.  Which is great until you live in LA and feel frikking earthquake tremors every month that shake you awake in the middle of the night until you get used to them and start sleeping through them and only then notice in the daytime. Which means you are now set up to die either by the flimsiness of your abode and/ or the fact that can sleep through stuff like that. But at least you get pretty decoration out of functional wall use.

I had to take a picture before taking this down as I sojourn back to the motherland.  So proud he he he...

And here is a picture of the new earrings that didn't make it to the display wall above, but will definitely be up there when I am able to create a new one. I have never seen yellow shells before I am still giddy about this find!

African First Ladies

BBC online posted an article on Monday about African First Ladies that was intended to give us some insight into to the women behind th men.  Unfortunately I think it fell short.  This article was more suited for a magazine than a hard news site.  The accomplishments of the women I think were overshadowed by trivial things like loss of freedom, and how they dress, which made them sound like spoilt celebrities.  


However at the same time it was nice to listen to these women talk in the accompanying audio clips.  I particularly enjoyed Sia Koroma, First Lady of Sierra Leone.  Her story of moving to England in 1997 to escape the war with her children, retraining as a nurse (she was a Scientist beforehand) and living in a council flat, to her currently using her skills at home  while living in State House, was very moving.  I also liked how she is trying to bridge the gap between tradition, (a word commonly used for the indigenous culture) and modernity (the polar opposite i.e. all things Western) by reaching out to leaders in each realm in her country.  I also admired how confident she is in herself as a woman.  The journalist clearly wanted to lead her down the path of berating men of power, particularly African men, and make it seem like women are in a helpless situation in this regard.  Koroma repeatedly dismissed questions and remarks by proclaiming she is a beautiful woman, women throwing themselves at her husband is to be expected and really she has better things to do than worry about what they are doing, she'd rather concentrate on working on her marriage and being herself. 


Read the comments made on the article. From vitriol to praise it is all there.  There are a lot of bitter men out there it seems.  A lot of negativity.  Makes me sad :(


Thanks to BIMBO for passing this on :)

Inaugural Post :)

I feel the pressure of making this post the most fantastic thing you have ever read because it is the inaugural post and as they say the first impression is most important.  I have finally mustered the courage needed to write.  I suffer from self diagnosed ADD, ADHD, (whatever they call it these days or are those two different things?) coupled with  a dose of inertia and a couple of shots of procrastination : )  (As we become more acquainted you will learn more about my hypochondria and penchant for psychosomatic diagnoses). I guess the best thing to do is to outline why I have started this blog and why this is a vital drop in the pool that is the blogosphere. 

I am tired of my beloved continent, mother Africa’s name being tarnished.  There is a latent but very robust renaissance going on that many of us are a part of that no one is talking about.  There are amazingly formidable movers and shakers doing great things that deserve to be highlighted.  Africa has so much potential, and yet it is bogged down by the senseless, irresponsible and insensitive actions of some.  I am not denying that Africa has problems.  But so do other continents.  I have lived in Europe and the USA and from what I see their problems are latent due to pecuniary advantages.

This blog aims to cure my nervous condition. My life as a peripatetic, wrought with constant reinvention to fit in while still maintaining the essence of my roots, has culminated in a hybrid that is hyper-aware of Africa’s standing at the bottom of global rankings and how no one else in the world has it right even though they think they do.  This is my quest to find inspiration from its sons and daughters, indigenous (I hate that word, you will find out more words that I cannot stand due to the way the word has shaped their semantics) and adopted, are striving to tap into Africa’s potential.  At the same time I want to indulge in its mystery and frolic in its whimsical nature.

This blog will not be all seriousness.  I do have a ridiculous and somewhat subversive humour.  I love movies and pop culture.  I will make comments on the zeitgeist.  I think a healthy balance will not only hopefully keep you reading, but also keep me writing.  THIS BLOG WILL BE WELL WRITTEN.  I will indulge in superfluous and grandiose language and revel in instances to fully exploit it as we Africans so enjoy.  This will include colourful euphemisms. This blog is not just for Africans (and I mean all Africans, none of this sub-Saharan - North Africa artificial splitting the world likes to do to separate us). It is for anyone who has a genuine interest in this quagmire of quandaries that make up the motherland and wants to see the forest and the trees for what they truly are.

This blog is also dedicated to my parents, who have worked all their lives on the African continent.  To my father who has proudly worked all his life in Africa to send his children abroad and who never treated me or my sisters like girls, but like human beings. To my mother who has always instilled in us a pride for our culture and has consistently shown the strength of the African woman.  To my sisters - there is no definition of me without you.

On that note I shall end, and hope that this is a start of a sojourn into the many facets of Africa with a mix of my insightful and demented thoughts interspersed to make this blog an enjoyable read!

xoxo ;}