Growing in Community and Elevating Creativity: A Dialogue with Mwanabibi Sikamo
GROWING IN COMMUNITY AND ELEVATING CREATIVITY
A DIALOGUE WITH MWANABIBI SIKAMO
Mwanabibi Sikamo is a Zambian storyteller and award-winning filmmaker. Her essays have appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Weganda Review, Ubwali, Brink Literary Journal and elsewhere. A Pushcart-nominated essayist, she was a finalist for the Sevhage Literary Prize for Creative Non-Fiction in 2023 and the Porter House Review Editors Prize for Nonfiction in 2025. In 2013, she co-founded ZedHair, Zambia’s first and biggest natural hair blog, a cultural movement to educate, empower and provide indigenous African hair products. Conditioned Roots received an honourable mention in Afrocritik’s 50 Notable Essays from Africa in 2024.
BY NKATEKO MASINGA
This conversation took place between Zambia and South Africa, via email.
Nkateko: Hello, Mwanabibi. Thank you so much for agreeing to have this conversation with me. Congratulations once again on being shortlisted for the Ubwali Hope Prize. Your essay, Conditioned Roots, struck a chord with me as I am currently on a journey of healing my hair and scalp after two decades of relaxer-induced damage and traction alopecia from excessive braiding. In my home language, XiTsonga, the word “Ngenani” means “come in”, so I felt immediately welcomed by the sights and sounds of the salon and its surroundings. However, I found myself panicking when the narrator realised that her familiar and trusted hairdresser was not there. I could never overstate the sheer comfort and relief of being in the care of my own regular hairdresser, so I truly understood her reluctance.
Mwanabibi: Thank you! Isn’t it great that we share so much in common as Africans? The languages but also this almost universal experience with our hair. Not that the hair thing is always positive but that we can always learn from each other.
Yes, being confronted with a new hairdresser when you’ve formed a trusting relationship with a previous one is really fear-inducing. We don’t all know how to take care of our hair and ironically, or even sadly, hairdressers are often the least knowledgeable because they are far more used to helping us figure out ways to disguise our hair. This is a major reason why we felt the need to form a natural hair community in the 2010s. It was absolutely necessary for us to be able to do it ourselves, learn it all as we went along and cheer each other on. We had to be self-sufficient.
Nkateko: I agree wholeheartedly. Your essay is written in a very interesting style, incorporating haircare recipes, personal anecdotes and critique. I am particularly curious about the recipes; are those your personal favourites? Do you think that the results of specific natural hair regimens depend on a person’s hair type? Whenever I receive a recommendation, my first concern is whether or not it is suitable for my hair type (4C) as I fear doing even more damage to my hair. I once tried a DIY banana-and-egg hair mask that I spent hours trying to get out of my hair as chunks of banana had gotten stuck. I still use eggs in my hair when the store-bought protein treatment in my house runs out, but I am staying very far away from bananas (Laughs).
Mwanabibi: We all had to learn the hard way. Hence the recipes. There have been so many mishaps along the way. In my case, I was more likely to find the egg had literally cooked on my hair because of the heat from conditioning!
I got into natural hair care just before returning to Zambia after my studies in 2012. Through discussions on hair forums I knew that while we had hardly any products for our hair in the UK, it was even worse back home. I became what was known as a mixtress, experimenting with known combinations of treatments and altering them not just for Afro hair but more specifically for my hair type. I was so afraid to run out of my favourite conditioner that I stockpiled it before my return. Of course it eventually finished and I needed to figure out alternatives.
This trial and error and discussions with others helped to hone in on what worked for different hair types, it also taught us that our hair is far more varied than it at first seems. Knowing if your hair is a prescribed number/letter according to the system created for us isn’t always enough. So, you may have 4A hair but what is your lifestyle, how easily does your hair absorb moisture, how do you like to style it? No one style, product or regimen fits all.
The recipes in the essay include some of my favourite ingredients but I also chose to highlight African oils, butters, powders and leaves – the ones I imagine many of our ancestors used.
Nkateko: Has this journey influenced other areas of your life? I have found that when I make a major change in one part of my life, it has a ripple effect on everything else. During the pandemic, I decided to go bald because I was spending the lockdown in Kenya while my hairdresser was in South Africa. That decision to lose my hair led to me shedding a lot of dead weight in my life, most significantly the relationship that I was in at the time. It was a gut-wrenching season, but in hindsight it was a much-needed catharsis.
Mwanabibi: What’s that saying? A woman who changes her hair is about to change her life, or something like that. I returned to natural at a time of transition and looking back I think maybe part of the learning was an attempt at me having some sort of control, a certainty about at least this one thing. I was moving back home after many years away and that was anxiety-inducing.
But my life changed in other ways. I spent a lot of time in forums helping other women take care of their own and their children’s hair. Three of us formed a Facebook group called Zedian Naturals and were a huge crutch for each other. Then ZedHair (which was then just a blog) had its very first Natural Hair MeetUp. I was a speaker. I stood on stage with a blender, avocado, bananas, apple cider vinegar – a variety of ingredients to make conditioners. I became an educator and helped launch ZedHair as a business – sourcing products, conducting workshops, I even did a year-long challenge creating a hairstyle a week to prove how versatile our hair is. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that during that time, my hair became my personality.
Nkateko: That is so inspiring! I’m literally going to camp out at ZedHair in a bit because I am obsessed with natural hair bridal looks and that is the first thing I saw when I checked out the blog. So much has changed since I made the decision to prioritise the strength and health of every strand of my hair versus what it looks like to the untrained eye. I loved how easy my mornings were when I had relaxed hair because I’d just wet it with oil moisturiser, tie it in a ponytail and go. But weeks after relaxing, there was a lot going on and not any of it was good. I had used the temporary slickness of my hair to cover the scalp burns from keeping the relaxer cream on for too long and now the dead skin from the burnt sections was starting to flake and after a wash, I was back to square one. Now I am at the point where I am willing to be out and about in a head wrap while I do deep maintenance on my hair. I am okay with being under construction. The shortcuts are no longer worth it. They never were, but I didn’t know any better back then. I am giving myself grace for how I treated my hair in my teens and early twenties because I really didn’t know then what I know now.
“Don’t you just love how putting different sorts of storytellers together can open up ways of seeing and elevating creativity?”
Mwanabibi: You absolutely have to give yourself grace. It’s all part of the learning process but also (for a nerd like me) so much of the fun. I loved the scientific style, trial and error method of getting to healthy hair. It’s not for everyone, which is why we need more hairdressers who specialize in natural hair or even just take an interest in how to handle it. But it’s also just hair -notwithstanding how our appearance impacts our confidence – and if it all goes wrong you can always start again. I shaved all my hair again in 2018 and it was so liberating. Everyone else was appalled but I had so much fun experimenting with hairstyles. Now I’m at the point where my regimen is very simple and I’m only able to keep it this way because I understand what works for me.
Nkateko: “If it all goes wrong, you can always start again.” You are speaking to my soul! Could we please normalise starting over, and not just with our hair? I am so tired of the “you only have one shot, so make it count” narrative. What if my “one shot” (as perceived by society) went down in flames? A few years ago, I lost the relationship and home that I thought were both “the ones” simultaneously, and I had to move back home to start over, literally from scratch. I was so ashamed. Looking back, that was probably the most important shift that my life has ever taken and although I would not go through it again if you paid me, it made me so comfortable with change that I now anticipate and embrace it. I get excited when things begin to shift (not as drastically as that past experience, please!) because I know that I have the opportunity to grow. Just like my hair.
Mwanabibi: Life lessons from our hair. I like it! I’m always open to change, I’ve had orange and blue hair, Kelis and Rihanna hair, short back and sides and no hair. The only thing I haven’t tried is a Jheri Curl.
I’m much the same with a lot of other things too. I’m always looking for the next adventure, or at least a more adventurous version of whatever I’m doing. So I got into writing, exploring African feminism, went on to review books and, now I’m trying to write them.
There’s often a common theme though, not always evident when you’re in the thick of it but when I look back from my first blog “Uprooting the Pumpkin” through to ZedHair and now with essays, fiction, children’s stories and film (I’m exhausted just listing this) it’s all about embracing our roots and harnessing that indigenous knowledge. I don’t know if I’m succeeding but it’s not for lack of trying. Of course, I don’t always enjoy it while it’s happening. The epiphany is mostly retrospective.
Nkateko: Absolutely. So much about life becomes clear in retrospect. On that note, do you ever look back at a finished art piece, whether it be textual or visual, and think about what you could have done differently? When you get an idea to create something, do you immediately know which form it will take, or is that revealed to you in the process?
Mwanabibi: Hmm, let’s see. I constantly have ideas swirling through my mind and then pick whichever is ripe to work on. This daydreaming can take days, months or even years. So, for example, I might know what I want to say in a story or essay, but until I know that first scene or the shape of it, I can’t start writing.
I’ve been told I can’t create without a framework (as if that’s some sort of negative), and at first I railed against this because does that mean I’m not as inventive as others? Now I embrace it as how my mind works best. For example, I’ll decide I want to write about all the different phases I’ve been through with my hair but a straightforward historic account seems boring and then, what if I take the scientific hair cycle – anagen, catagen and telogen – and somehow weave my story around that idea. Now I have a form, much more fun.
So, I guess the short answer is, form comes first and I feel my way through the rest. This means if I’m hard on myself in retrospect it’s about whether I think I was able to execute the feeling I wanted to convey as revealed during the daydream phase. But I don’t beat myself up over what past me created, she didn’t know better and the only reason I know that now is because I know more. If anything it keeps me attempting more challenging forms of work.
And sometimes I’ll look back at my work and decide I want to try and repurpose it. Make it a film or a podcast from a story or essay.
Nkateko: Repurposed work is so affirming. I have a poem that was initially commissioned by a local newspaper for an anti-GBV campaign, then later adapted into a short film by a media company. I recently shared a longer version of the same poem at an academic symposium. Which past works of yours do you consider eligible for revisiting and repurposing? Is it a personal conviction that a particular piece should exist in a different form, or is there also some external validation that could push you in that direction? I realise that my own repurposed work has been mainly prompted by others and I wonder if I am too self-critical to see the potential in other pieces.
Mwanabibi: A poem into a short film? I’m suitably intrigued.
It’s always difficult to know when your idea begins and a friend’s suggestion or opinion ends, right? But I think for me one of my biggest repurposing projects was definitely initiated as a result of external validation. I started writing fiction because a friend needed some stories to read to her kids as she was homeschooling. I wrote a children’s book based on myth, folklore and history. Each week I’d put together some chapters and we’d discuss the work, she’d read along with her kids and it was so affirming. I fell in love with the adults in those stories and have gone on to publish some of their stories too.
That book is still in my drafts but I created short stories based in that world and made a curriculum for afterschool activities for 7 to 11 year olds. The plan was written out for a while before I showed it to a friend who nudged me to approach schools with it.
The kids and I write stories, poems, puzzles – all sorts – and then at the end of each term we put together a magazine, audioplay or podcast. This is repurposing on steroids and perfect for my overactive mind. Also, those kids are my co-conspirators and they’re a tough crowd, so I will know really quickly if the form isn’t working.
I do have some work that I have a personal conviction to repurpose but without a deadline or accountability I’m afraid they are banished to procrastination purgatory – for now.
Nkateko: A few years ago, I was part of a writing program consisting of healthcare workers who write stories, along with journalists whose main area of interest is health-related news. The project that I came out of that program with is a series of poems responding to news articles about the public healthcare system in South Africa. One of the issues that persisted as I did my research was gender-based violence, and I piloted the series with a poem I had been commissioned to write for a local newspaper for their “Don’t Look Away” campaign in response to gender-based violence. The poem, titled “16 Days? What Happens on Day 17?”, caught the attention of filmmaker and founder of Thase Media, Elelwani Netshifhire. She partnered with a brilliant actress, Shonisani Mawisa, to capture the poem on film. That project gave me the confidence to take the poem to the stage at the 2023 Open Book Festival in Cape Town as part of an anti-GBV platform called “Bodies Under Siege” by art NPO Hear My Voice. Since then, I have shared the poem at several festivals and conferences, most recently at the University of South Africa.
People say “I would give you the world” all the time, but you literally did that and more! An entire creative universe of characters, and a curriculum of after-school activities? I bow. You are creating memories that your friend and her children will never forget. Why is the book still in your drafts, if I may ask? Do you find that the dynamic process of consistently creating content with the children changes your mind regarding which stories to include in the book and which ones to leave out? If that’s the case, release them in volumes! I have little nieces who absolutely adore story books of all kinds. There can never be too many stories in the world, and I say that as someone who is unlearning the harmful narratives that I internalised from the fairytales I devoured as a young girl. I love that the current generation of Black girls can see themselves reflected in the stories that they read.
Mwanabibi: Don’t you just love how putting different sorts of storytellers together can open up ways of seeing and elevating creativity?
That process, the dynamism of reading, teaching and creating with the kids is part of why the book is still in drafts but not the whole reason. It was my first “novel”. I had the ideas but not the skills. The storytelling clubs have taught me what I didn’t know. Having the kids react in real time has allowed me to gain a better understanding of what works and why. I had to write a story a week with activities for each one – grueling stuff, lots of fun, but grueling. A child will let you know immediately if they get bored or confused or if they don’t believe something. But when they’re immersed, ask if it’s a true story, or relate to the characters, that’s incredibly rewarding.
So, yes, I am working on releasing the stories as individual workbooks but publishing moves at such a glacial pace.
Nkateko: Absolutely! I missed out on a lot of opportunities for collaboration and external input early in my career because I was stubborn and resistant to criticism, but the last few years have more than made up for that. Now I listen to all feedback, no matter how difficult it is to digest, because I know I still have a solid body of work I can fall back on if one project fails. Back then, my response to rejections was “okay, I’ll publish it myself”. I have no regrets about how it all turned out, but sometimes I look back at the poems I could have reworked and submitted to literary journals and think that my impatience was an act of self-sabotage. How receptive are you to criticism toward your writing? Apart from your friend and the kids, are there other trusted readers that you send your work to before it goes out into the world? Do you have a strategy for coping with rejection?
Mwanabibi: I have a love-hate relationship with feedback; a wildly oscillating pendulum. I hate all editors as soon as I see their suggestions and then I start implementing and love them with all my heart. There is no in-between.
Seriously, I seek out feedback, receive it through gritted teeth, let it marinate and thoroughly enjoy the process of editing. After I wrote my first short story, I sent it out for feedback. That was nerve wracking but the value I got was immense and it’s become an entrenched part of my process. I don’t always send the work to the same people because I’m wary of it feeling like a job but I do have a sort of profile of the kind of fellow writer or enthusiastic reader I think might give helpful insight – at least two people per piece of writing.
When it comes to rejection, I wouldn’t say it slides off me like water off a duck but I have become far more resilient since I started submitting to literary magazines almost 3 yrs ago. I’ve had pieces rejected at one magazine only to be shortlisted for an award at another so I think I’ve internalized the idea that opinions on my work can be highly subjective and try not to take it personal. If one piece gets too many rejections I rework or repurpose and try again.
I do wonder whether sometimes I’m too much the opposite of what you describe you were early on. I’m very reticent about “just self-publishing”. I think some sort of balance would work better but I’m still figuring that out. As an African writer with little access to a publishing industry this can be difficult.
Nkateko: “I hate all editors as soon as I see their suggestions” is so real! I am the same. I have also realised that editors’ views are subjective and that my piece not being “the right fit” for a particular issue of a magazine does not mean I will never get published by them as I may have perhaps taken my interpretation of the theme too far in a particular instance. Literary magazines that are among my “dream publications” are like a literary Met Gala to me; I always think “I may have missed the brief this year but I will be back next year, and I will be best-dressed! (Laughs).
I take the “please do submit again in future, we would love to read more of your work” very seriously. I don’t really mind submitting once a year to see if my luck has changed. But I do reach a point where I accept that my piece is not the right fit for a particular platform in its entirety and perhaps for all eternity. I have to be dragged out kicking and screaming and yes it hurts, but it is important to know when to give up. When the work gets accepted elsewhere, accompanied by an honorarium and an award nomination, it’s like “Look at God, o!” It feels so validating. I think that simultaneous submissions have saved my life in many instances where my confidence was low due to rejections.
I hear you on the issue of access and I have confidence that the landscape is steadily improving. Prestigious homegrown literary platforms like Ubwali instil so much pride in me for being an African and are confirmation that we are moving in the right direction as writers and curators on the continent. On that note, Mwanabibi, I wish you the very best with the results of the Hope Prize and I truly appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with me. I have thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you.
Mwanabibi: I too have literary magazines that receive my work at almost every call and I hope the editors notice how my writing is evolving even if they still say no. I imagine them smiling to themselves about my progress. More comforting to think that than that maybe they’re rolling their eyes when they see my name in the slush pile again.
Having said all this, I love that we have our own spaces as Africans. Magazines that are more likely to get it, more willing to work with us to get the work out there. One of my most widely read pieces of fiction was published in Omenana, an African Speculative Fiction magazine that then partnered with a Brazilian university to translate my work. And of course Ubwali has been such a source of pride for me as a Zambian not just for the opportunity to publish but the care paid to our work and the relentless (positive) cheerleading.
So, yes, I agree, our own spaces are building and growing alongside our community. And that’s what this dialogue has felt like – communing. It has been an immense pleasure talking. Thank you.
Nkateko Masinga is an award-winning South African writer whose poetry has been translated into French, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada and Romanian. Her latest book, Daughter Wound, was published by UK publisher Hazel Press in April 2024 and was named Book of the Week at the London Review Bookshop in the first week of its release.
