00:00Nothing could convince Prof to lock his hair again.
00:03Not after what happened last time.
00:06One afternoon while walking,
00:08the rapper and his brother were stopped by police.
00:10Even before the officers spoke to them,
00:13Prof knew he was being profiled for their hair.
00:16So they had talked about my brother and me.
00:19He said,
00:20He said,
00:21He said,
00:30The brothers were arrested.
00:32A few days later,
00:33a sympathetic officer agreed to release Prof
00:36on condition that he would shave that evening.
00:38He agreed,
00:39but the ordeal left him traumatized.
00:42Prof's experience reveals strongly held beliefs
00:45that Kenyans have about locks and people that wear them.
00:48That they are unkempt,
00:50unprofessional and delinquent.
00:52But how did a hairstyle come to be associated
00:55and carry so much stigma and controversy?
00:58To understand that,
00:59we must look back in time.
01:01In Africa,
01:02Ethiopian Coptic priests reportedly wore their hair locked
01:05as early as in the 5th century.
01:07By 3000 BC,
01:09there was evidence of people in the Sahara with locks.
01:12But it wasn't until the 1950s
01:15that locks took their place in Kenya's history.
01:17A group of guerrilla fighters
01:19pushing for the country's independence emerged from the forest
01:21with their hair matted into freely formed locks.
01:25The Mau Mau became synonymous with locks.
01:28In post-colonial Kenya,
01:30locks would re-emerge.
01:31In the 1980s,
01:33activist Koigi Wawamuere grew out his hair
01:35while in detention after he was denied a comb.
01:38The government tried to shave him.
01:40He refused.
01:41He took them to court and won.
01:43The G
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