Random Activist and Nap Activist Take Shantytown Sisters to Church!

March 1st

The only way you will understand this particular blog entry is to understand who I am.

My name is Linda, I am a journalist by profession and I am on this trip because I was commissioned by Juanita to document in writing about her grass roots gift giving here in Africa. My job is to write about her movements as a ‘random activist.’

But I also have an alter ego. I am Mosetta, a ‘nap activist.’ In my other life I am founder of A Nappy Hair Affair and the woman who uses the sensitive issue of hair in the African American community as a device to raise cultural awareness, boost self esteem where necessary and foster self-appreciation and self-love.

Mosetta, my alter ego was not invited on this trip. But there was something very special that Juanita the ‘random activist, did in one of the South African shantytowns that caused Mosetta, the ‘nap activist,’ to come forth.

I wrote about that shantytown episode in a letter to a friend :

Dear Patrice

Girl, today was too much. Juanita is literally stopping by roadsides pressing money change in the hands of unsuspecting South African sisters’ to lighten their load and brighten their day.

We were in a shantytown in Greenfields, visiting with the relatives of our driver, Cromwell. We met two of Cromwell’s cousins who were single mothers. Juanita gave each of them enough money to pay one month’s rent.

One of the mothers had a six-year-old daughter. Juanita noticed that the little girl’s hair was permed. Juanita’s face got all distorted and she started running her fingers through the child’s hair. It was very dry and damaged.

She asked the mother why she was perming that baby’s hair.
The mother who also wore a perm, said, “Because it makes it grow.”
Patrice, before you go off like we did, there’s more.
Another bright-eyed sister who had close cropped, natural hair that framed her round face and bought out her high cheekbones and smooth skin, said she was planning to go and get a perm. “I want to be beautiful,” she told us.
Why did those sisters have to go and say that stuff to us?
Can you imagine the irony of a bunch of nappy-headed sisters from the states getting ready to school their straight and wannabe straight-haired sisters from Africa?
Girl, we took them to church!

The Right Reverend Juanita got possessed. She started rocking her long, unchemically-treated locks and preaching at a feverish pitch. Then the choir of nappy-headed sisters on her documentary dream team shouted some Amen’s! Derrick, our good looking, nappy-headed filmmaker stepped in to reaffirm their beauty simply by telling them that they are.
Then we looked up in the air. Was it a bird? A plane? No, it was Mosetta, the Kink Krusader swooping in the Motherland. Let the naptism begin! .

Just before extending those sisters her signature greeting, the Nap Dap, Mosetta lead them in singing her nappy song. “If you’re nappy and you know it clap your hands!” When she started singing the last line, . . “if you’re nappy and you know it say I’m free,” those sisters flung their arms wide and their shouts of freedom were deafening!
Girl, I almost started talking in tongue!

Before I came on this assignment Patrice, I had to have a little talk with Mosetta. She wanted to come to Africa with me but I told her that Juanita did not invite her.

This was a writing assignment, not a nappy one. I told Mosetta that she had to stay home. But honey, when those shantytown sisters started hatin’ on their beautiful black selves, Mosetta ignored my wishes. She donned her cape, took flight and landed just in time to drop her Kink

Commandments and deliver those sisters from o-press-ion.
Hairlelujah!
And we caught it all on video!

Miss you.
Love Mosetta . . . I mean Linda.

Visit: http://www.randomactsfoundation.com/story.htm

Watch: http://www.ibroadcasts.tv/randomacts.htm