Poached this from the other site
Ingredients
Words in quotes are spelled phonetically because they sound Arabic
She doesn't say at what point the "missic", resin, and cloves are used. Are they pounded into the powder or added to the oil?
- Chébé seeds (the only one listed in the description)
- "Mahellaba soubiane" seeds
- "Missic" stone to scent
- Cloves
- "Samour" resin
- Hair oil or pomade; the woman says they used to use beurre de boeuf but le boeuf smelled too strong. I don't know if she means ordinary churned butter or does she mean beef tallow or fat? I've never heard of beurre de boeuf.
Directions
They grill the seeds, then pound and sieve to obtain a powder.
They wet the hair with water, then apply the powder, followed by the oil or pomade. Braid it up. Repeat every five days.
No reason is given for why they don't do this at the hairline, just that they don't.
About the People
More info on the Baggara Arabs (Arabes bassara) on Wikipedia
No reason is given for why they don't do this at the hairline, just that they don't.
Thanks for the video, I'm always happy to learn about long hair practices from around the world.
I don't think the secret to the length is in the ingredients, but rather in them oiling their hair til saturation, alternating it with the powder (which must harden and function as a type of protective covering) and them putting it in braids. It's a kind of extreme protective styling. They have beautiful hair!!
Poached this from the other site
Ingredients
Words in quotes are spelled phonetically because they sound Arabic
She doesn't say at what point the "missic", resin, and cloves are used. Are they pounded into the powder or added to the oil?
- Chébé seeds (the only one listed in the description)
- "Mahellaba soubiane" seeds
- "Missic" stone to scent
- Cloves
- "Samour" resin
- Hair oil or pomade; the woman says they used to use beurre de boeuf but le boeuf smelled too strong. I don't know if she means ordinary churned butter or does she mean beef tallow or fat? I've never heard of beurre de boeuf.
Directions
They grill the seeds, then pound and sieve to obtain a powder.
They wet the hair with water, then apply the powder, followed by the oil or pomade. Braid it up. Repeat every five days.
No reason is given for why they don't do this at the hairline, just that they don't.
About the People
More info on the Baggara Arabs (Arabes bassara) on Wikipedia
My French is very poor so I understood very little. But at least I understood the songs in the background because they are in Arabic lol
I have a few comments:
1. Genetics might play a role in this. As Baggara Arabs are a mix between African and Arab ancestors, many of them have thick, silky, wavy/curly rather than coily strands, the thing that should make length retention somehow easier than it is for us who have hair that is breakage-prone, tangle-prone and more difficult to moisturize.
2. Extensive oiling and protective styling also seems to play a big role in this because the substances used are probably not specifically nutritious for hair or anything. Other than the oil, these are almost all perfume substances. Together and after that special preparation they smell amazing!
3. Mahlab is an Arabic word. This is the aromatic seeds of some cherry plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahleb It is widely used in our culture to produce traditional perfumes specially bridal and married women perfumes. The good news is that I think the seeds are available in the western world as well.
4. Misic is the Arabic word for musk. The one that you see in the video is the one that is widely used in our culture for the same purposes as above. It's called musk xylol which is synthetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk_xylene
5. Cloves are traditionally also used for their scent.
6. Samour/Samough is the arabic word for glue/gum. The substance in the video is the Gum Arabic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gum_arabic Sudan is responsible for about 50% of the total production of this substance.
7. beurre de boeuf is indeed beef fat. In our local Arabic we call this "wadak". I don't know if that word is heard in the video or not. And yes it doesn't smell good and that is why for the preparation of traditional hair oil (karkar) people have moved away from it to the use of other okay-smelling oils. I don't now remember which one exactly my mom used to use. Might be sesame or cotton or peanut oil, the usual cooking oils. Some people use bees wax instead of wadak to make the oil thick. My mom used that as well at a point in time.
8. You can now understand why traditionally these people used all these perfume substances in their hair oil. The "wadak" smelled awful lol. I bet the oil now without it smells straight from heaven.
9. For the life of me, I can't figure out what the chebe sticks are. I might have to find a way to ask my mom about it.
10. I just came across this website of a Sudanese lady who sells (or used to sell) some of these substances. She has the musk, the gum, and the mahleb https://www.sitanaonline.com/collections/sudanese-collection?page=1 The baggara are natives of Sudan as you can see from the wikipedia link in the second post. But practically the whole of Sudan uses these substances. The hair paste/preparation (oil+powder) in the video is very special to them though it seems. I haven't seen it before. We (my people do come from Kordofan too) use similarly perfumed hair oils but not pastes.
lipstickalleyThanks again. Would you mind sharing what site you got it from?
Genetics might play a role in this. As Baggara Arabs are a mix between African and Arab ancestors, many of them have thick, silky, wavy/curly rather than coily strands, the thing that should make length retention somehow easier than it is for us who have hair that is breakage-prone, tangle-prone and more difficult to moisturize.
so basically heavy sealing and protective styling?
A lot of the YouTube responses attribute their length to genetics, but I don't agree.
While I would definately put money on the ingredients not being the reason why their hair is so long, I'm reluctant to attribute it to Arab ancestry. Their facial features and skin tones seem to go from visibly mixed to phenotypically black African. I assume their hair similarly runs the gamut. Yet, they choose to attribute the length to their technique and not hair texture. I don't think we can ignore that. Also, their hair practices conforms to what has been proven on this board through trial and error to grow afro hair long. These women live in the village. How many have left to go live in the city only to disregard or not be able to follow the regimen and come back to visit with shorter, broken hair?
Contrast that with African Americans, another mixed group, who attribute hair length to racial mixture (métissage) and ancestry but are not known for long hair. Outside of these hair boards, people fully believe in "good" and "bad" hair and hair "grade" and use them to explain hair length. Yet, they do not, as a group, observe hair practices known to grow long afro hair.
You would also have to explain why the bangs of the Baggara are comparatively shorter than the rest of their hair and is not longer than what other African groups grow without issue. They do not appear to cut their hair.
Crépus is french for nappy/kinky hair, what most here would describe as 4a/b/c and even some 3c hair. Unless she was going for clicks, the narator would have described their hair as bouclé if it was curly and of a silky texture. She describes her own hair as crépus and I would put her in the 3c/4a camp. Maybe she saw other women with 4a/b/c hair but that woman was the only one getting her hair done while she was visiting or willing to be filmed? Seeing other women's hair would have been helpful, but I understand this is her first documentary style video.
Finally, that woman's hair is thin and fine -- nothing thick about it. My hair is thin and fine (and I'm tempted to say it looks just like hers) and it breaks and splits very easily and no matter what I do. Sometimes I think only babies and people with health issues/vitamin deficiencies have weaker hair. If anything, I think they have very delicate, breakage and tangle prone hair which is why they developed this technique.
I have more thoughts about this video but I'm gonna stop here for now.
I don't think that we disagree too much. If you re-read my post above I said that "Genetics might play a role in this" and said that "Extensive oiling and protective styling also seems to play a big role in this" while de-emphasizing the role of the ingredients. And I think it's the part of the protective styling and lubrication that plays the bigger part and that explains about the bangs not growing very long.
But to be honest the hair of the lady in the video did seem to me to be more on the silky side. Look at these plump waves that form once she gets water and oil in it! My hair does NOT do that sort of thing. Her hair does look dry (maybe parched) though before application which probably leads to the frizziness. I'm not sure about the thickness of the individual strand though. Might not be all that thick.
But as is the case with black people everywhere I'd say that it's not always possible to tell the person's hair type by looking at their skin color and facial features. Or maybe this phenomenon is more prominent in my people. Around here there are great variations in everything. There are just so many people with real dark complexions, darker than me who have the longest, silkiest hair which is generally considered to be Asian variety hair. So there isn't always a correlation between skin tone and hair type around here. The baggara arab people (there are also non-arab baggara) have this emphasis on "arab" because they do retain some "resemblance" to their arab ancestry, even though it might be mild. It's apparently a thing for them. If you read about the Darfur war, it is often said to take place between the Arab and the non-Arab tribes. But I digress. When it comes to hair, it varies for them from this:
To this:
and this:
That's why I said in my post that "many of them have thick, silky, wavy/curly ... strands". Of course many of them don't. I was just pointing out a fact that might be relevant.
Like you, I do not believe in good and bad hair. I believe that certain hair characteristics can make it easier or more difficult for one to retain length, and that the regimen and techniques that we follow have to take into consideration our hair characteristics to maximize retention. And while we all believe in our hair's potential to grow to impressive lengths, many of us may take too long to figure out the best hair practices that keep their hair moisturized and safe from breakage. Some of us unfortunately never figure that out despite trying to, and asking for others help. It's not entirely their fault though because as I said our hair needs extra TLC which might not be intuitive, and we love it and are proud of it and always eager to understand it no matter what.
I don't want to buy this product from euros
...just African/black women.