Imitating a Banned Hairstyle

Transcript

[Kevin Tervala] Senior Karamojong men would grow their hair out incredibly long and they would cover it in
mud. So you can see that sort of sweeping back pattern here, repeated in these lines that you can see
moving back towards the back of the head.
The dictator Idi Amin who comes to power right after colonialism starts to really push back against these
more sort of traditional hairstyles and starts to really focus a lot of his wrath on the Karamojong, which
were seen and are seen sometimes as sort of a troublesome population in the region. So he starts to outlaw
all of these hairstyles. So in order for men to be able to sort of function ritually and to have the same sort of
status, because one’s status is very much connected to the way one dresses, they start creating these
removable headdresses