Zulu man, Africa 1879. In pre-colonial African societies, men’s hairstyles served as visual markers communicating ranking, religion, wealth, ethnic identity, and marital status. “Just about everything about a person’s identity could be learned by looking at the hair,” says journalist Lori Tharps, who co-wrote the book Hair Story about the history of black hair. When men from the Wolof tribe went to war they wore a braided style. While a woman in mourning would either not “do” her hair or adopt a subdued style. “What’s more, many believed that hair, given its close location to the skies, was the conduit for spiritual interaction with God,” she adds. Among the Yoruba people of West Africa, intricate hairstyles were once reserved for royalty, while men of some tribes cut their hair only to mourn the death of a close relative, believing a mourner’s spirit was desolated by loss, and they had to dispose of it in a ceremonious way.   Amasunzu hairstyle used in Rwanda by single men and women to inform the public that they were available and of eligible age. Dreadlocks, which could be formed naturally or intentionally and varied in thickness and length, were worn by men of cultures like the Maasai, Nubian, Berber, and Rastafari. Cornrows were worn by men across cultures including the Ewe, Ashanti, Igbo, and Yoruba, plaited close to the scalp in geometric or symbolic patterns that could create mohawks or crowns.     Fulani, Burkina Faso, 1930. The Himba people of Namibia used red ochre and butter to style their hair, representing their connection to beauty, tradition, and the earth. Hair held spiritual significance and was believed to connect men to ancestors and the divine, making it far more than decoration. It was a language written on the body, readable to anyone who understood the codes of their culture.       “Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You’re caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn’t go running with Curt today because you don’t want to sweat out this straightness. You’re always battling to make your hair do what it wasn’t meant to do.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah       Via: Equator The post Men’s Hairdressing as a Work of Art in pre-Colonial Africa appeared first on Flashbak.

from SGT Report: Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are crashing out over the Epstein coverup of the world’s most powerful and evil people, while Trump still maintains he just doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. All while the new emails reveal that our fallen world is controlled by pedovore baby eating demons. Can […]

from RT: Washington is slamming Brussels for censorship – and coming from such a master manipulator, it should be taken seriously The Committee on the Judiciary of the US House of Representatives has issued an important report. Its title is an officialese mouthful: “The Foreign Censorship Threat, Part II: Europe’s decade-long campaign to censor the global internet […]

In Kashmir, where apple orchards often dominate conversations about climate-driven crop losses, a quieter agricultural shift is unfolding in the wetlands of this Himalayan region. Farmers are reviving nadur, or lotus stem, a crop that once sustained families across the region and nearly disappeared under pollution, floods and erratic weather. What is bringing it back is not a program or new technology, but farmers working with water instead of trying to force it away. For generations, lotus stem was harvested in winter from the shallow marshes of lakes such as Dal and Wular. Pulled from soft silt and slow-moving water, it was woven into daily life, cooked as a vegetable, fried into the street snack nadur monji, or preserved in pickles. The crop also anchored livelihoods. Women often handled processing and sales, providing households with steady winter income. A vendor sells traditional Kashmiri street food, including fried lotus stem. Credit: Safina Nabi But this system has fallen apart over the past decade. Urban encroachment, sewage, rising temperatures and floods such as the disastrous ones that the region suffered in 2014 have clogged wetlands with debris and silt. Water levels have become erratic, aquatic life has declined and lotus cultivation has slowly faded. By the late 2010s, many families had stopped harvesting lotus altogether, turning away from the water that had long sustained them. Ghulam Nabi Dar, 68, watched this unfold along the edge of Wular Lake in Bandipora, a town on the water’s northern banks. His two-hectare patch once yielded enough lotus stem to feed his family and supply local markets. By 2020, repeated crop failures had left his lake plot unproductive. “The water changed,” Dar says. “It became thick, dark. Lotus wouldn’t grow.” Instead of waiting for large-scale restoration projects, Dar turned to knowledge passed down from his grandfather, who farmed lotus in the same waters decades earlier. In early 2021, Dar began cleaning his section of the lake himself. Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] Using handmade reed nets, shovels and family labor, he spent months removing silt and waste from shallow waters. He revived an old technique of stirring the lakebed with long poles to oxygenate the soil and help roots take hold. No chemicals. No machines. Just patience and repetition. “It was slow work,” Dar says. “But the water started responding.” Aquatic plants returned first, followed by small fish. By winter, lotus roots had re-established. Dar harvested 12 quintals (a unit used in agriculture for measuring crop yields, one quintal is the equivalent of about 100kg) that season, earning about 1.5 lakh (approximately $1,600). The post Kashmir’s Lotus Stems Rise Again appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.