Every woman these days wants their hair looking good, whether treated with chemicals, braided or left natural. This is a daily need for women, meaning there will always be demand for hairdressers. Gone are the days when our mothers tied headscarves on their heads and schools demanded all students maintain very short hair including girls.
A young woman can go to vocational college and learn everything about hairdressing. I know there are beauty salons in town, but those can be left for the people who live and work in town. A young woman with hairdressing skills can set up her operation in her home, with customers coming from her neighborhood. One can also make their services mobile, making women’s hair in the comfort of their homes. With a lot of women cutting their hair and keeping it short, one can also learn hair cutting skills so that their services are all round. Who knows, you may visit a home to braid a woman’s hair, only to have her husband and son asking for a haircut. That’s more money in your pocket. Why not?
One can also learn to make hair and skincare products with locally available raw materials. How did coconut oil become so popular? Swahili housewives, who did not have much money to purchase hair products from the shops, started making their own homemade oil from the locally available coconuts, a fruit they used daily for their cooking and realized it contained plenty of rich natural oils. Born out of need, coconut oil is now widely used all over the country. Big companies started processing and packaging the oil, you can now purchase it from shops everywhere.
You are learned young people who understands chemical interactions and benefits from your science lessons in high school. Study from the internet and see what local plants or animal products can be used for what benefit. It may be the breakthrough the world has been waiting for. Remember the story about Stinging Nettle (Thabai). There was no internet to consult, yet our mothers, your grandmothers, discovered it could be used for Mukimo instead of Kahurura. Today, Thabai is highly sought after for its health benefits that the scientists have since discovered. Do not be afraid to pioneer. The product you create today might be lining supermarket shelves all over the country some day. But that will not happen until you create it. So, get to work.
