Carine Maniraguha, a Rwandan creative, believes that hair is more than just style or aesthetics; it is a medium of communication and physical manifestation of someone’s history. She grew up watching her mother braiding hair for different people hence adopting the craft. After some years working as a hairstylist, she pondered on one of the styles whose final result (the braids and how they were tied) depicted a flower. I realised that I could create something else rather than just a flower, narrates Maniraguha. As a poetess, I also found it as a form of storytelling. Hair, alone, can tell a story without being associated with any other body part. In May 2022, she started working on her creations, applying different styles to customers and friends who wanted their hairs braided and tied. She said she would tailor the style to the event they were to attend. When people loved her services and had their hairstyles appreciated by other people in events, music videos as well as movies, Maniraguha started nurturing an idea of having an exhibition to showcase her creation to the public, making people aware that there is art in hair storytelling. Her plan came to pass. The exhibition took place at Art Rwanda Ubuhanzi’s space on the night of September 16, and saw Maniraguha exhibiting five hairstyles that tell stories. She also crafted four of them live, styling different hairs of men and women. One of her styles titled “Urugendo Shuri” contains braids that she said are hard to make and untie, and hence she used them to portray school life. The braids are interwoven and made in a way that look endless just like how school doesn’t end because after graduating from the university, you also have to attend the school of life. But even though it’s hard, a person has to keep going, she said, adding that one can have their hair styled like that when attending an academic event like a graduation ceremony. Her other style named “Inzira ya Muntu” which is mainly made for ladies, portrays how a person is born pure but loses that as she grows up. “The purity of the girl is represented by white flowers in her head but as she grows up, she meets different people with different cultures and they change her. The changes are represented by pieces of clothes and other different colours in the braid. The braid is long, and that represents a person's growth journey,” she said. With the same braid, Maniraguha continued. A person can wrap it around herself as a scarf, which means there comes a time when you need to live and work with different people even when your beliefs and cultures are not the same so that you can achieve your goal. One can also round-tie the braid at the top of the head, and that means that a person has their own cultures, but can be shaped into who she is by different people and things. It means that she needs all those people to reach her goal. Another style called “Ubusitani” contains a tree that has branches and different fruits. Maniraguha said that she used vegetation to portray that “it requires a good garden with a mixture of other different things to feed the roots of a tree for it to grow and look nice.” She added: “That shows that in our life, we need to have different people we can live and work with for us to grow.” Maniraguha declared that people should adopt her styles because they have meaning and can communicate a message, depict a piece of art that compels one to explore more and serve as lessons on how one can uniquely take care of their hair. She has started providing training on hairstyling and creation through her initiative, Flower Hair Collection. She plans to make exhibitions every month to showcase new creations. Maniraguha is also an actress. She has acted in popular series; Seburikoko, Makuta, and Ejo si kera that is aired on RBA. She has also scooped poetry awards including ‘Transpoesis Trophy’ and Best Poet at the Art Rwanda Ubuhanzi awards, Season 1.
