Flick Ups

This looks a lot like the framed picture of Betty's Beauty School students
Photo credit: youtube.com

Mother had a lot of businesses when were growing up but the one that comes to my mind today is the beauty salon. I was told that before I was born that it was a proper beauty school and that mother had a lot of students that she trained to be beautician,  herself being a certified beautician from a prestigious Beauty school in the UK.

All I had to convince me of her beauty school were a framed certificate and a framed picture of a set of graduating students with big wigs sitting very elegantly in mini dresses and platform sandals. I remember always starring at the pictures and wishing I was born in those days.


I loved to get my hair done in mother's beauty salon, she made it up so beautifully and I loved to have my hair relaxed and rolled into curls although my older siblings would tell me then that the curls made me look like an adult dwarf.


Sometimes after doing my depressing Math homework, mother let me sit in the salon, I loved to watch the hair dressers style people’s hair and my favourite styles were the bulb and flick ups. I hated jerry curls because of the smell of the curl activator and the way that it dripped from both sides of the face of the person wearing the curls.


At the time when Ghanaians were the bee’s knees in the hair salon business, mother had about four of them working in her salon. I will never forget their names; Kofi, Charley, Achampong and another Kofi. The business boomed and people had to queue to get their hair done. From the times I spent watching and helping in my little ways I learnt a few skills and so it was no big deal when at one Christmas my sister Kerus and I decided to  run a salon business in Lokpanta for the Christmas period.


We noticed that a lot of people had their rollers in their hair all day depending solely on the sun to dry their hair. They would go back to the salon in the evening to remove the rollers and get their hair styled. We identified a need and quickly sprung into action.


Father’s old house in the area of Lokpanta that we called Main road because the house faced the major road was our best bet. It was a bungalow and it still had all its furniture intact. The averagely sized living room would be our work area and the study room would be the wash room. We asked father for a generator and he obliged us. We requested for some hair dryers and mother had three delivered from Enugu to Lokpanta. We bought some hair products and opened up for business.


Kerus let me be the chief stylist because she saw that I was hands-on and knew exactly what to do. In the night where almost everywhere in Lokpanta was dark due to no electricity, our salon was brightly lit with music blasting from the music player that mother set up in the place to provide some entertainment.


By the next day our salon became the next best thing after roasted yam and local sauce, one evening mother came to check on us and saw that we were almost overwhelmed by the number of customers that we had and she quickly got to work. We were happy till she demanded for the money that we made for the day, she volunteered to be our cashier and that was how Betty would come every evening to monitor the activities, sometimes she came with goodies and shared to everyone.


Our salon very quickly became the favourite hub in Lokpanta, almost everyone came down in the evenings to spend time around our salon, mother had them fix a fluorescent bulb outside the salon and so people were able to do their other transactions that required the use of light. In those days you could count the number of people who had generators in Lokpanta and they were not up to five.


Apart from the local lamps and torches, the moon was our main source of light in the night but with our salon business the moon was on a holiday;  even the children came out for their moonlight play in our modest business area. 


One more thing that inspired us to start that business was the fact that Kerus was going to the University and by the time father told her the amount of money that she was entitled to, she calculated that it wouldn’t meet all her needs till was eligible for more money, the fear of being broke in a University was a good motivation.


At the end of our business venture, when it was time to share our money, we expected mother to give us the whole money, after all the business was our business idea and we should be encouraged. Betty didn’t care, she said that the hair dryers were on lease to us and that the generator Ferdinand gave to his children to use was hers, she also insisted that the petrol father generously filled the generator with was hers.


To cut a long story short, by the time mother calculated all we owed her we all burst out laughing because all the money we made belonged to her but like she always did, she promised to do more than that money’s worth.


By the way, Lokpanta was in news recently, Mr. Chris Ngige the honourable Minister of labour and employment mentioned Lokpanta at least three times while talking about the federal projects in a recent interview on TV. I am excited that Lokpanta is slowly gaining grounds, one day, we shall switch on the light without a generator in Lokpanta. Amen!