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On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Lacresha Carter drove more than an hour from her home in York, Pa., with her 4-year-old son to Bowie, Md., to get her hair braided. She had come across a TikTok that said the service at Nadine’s Hair Braiding could be done in 2？ hours.
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The short time commitment was worth it, said Carter, 35. She brought bundles of her own braiding hair in a black plastic bag and packed snacks for her son.
When they told her she could bring her child, that sold her.
A break from hair extensions and the sometimes time-consuming task of styling her own hair each day is exactly what Carter wants for at least the next six to eight weeks, she said.
“It’s just easier,” she said moments before following a braider who led her through a cluster of women getting their hair braided by at least two stylists each.
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The shop’s owner, Nadine Djuiko, is an immigrant from Cameroon who spent years struggling to find success in America — first as a student who hoped to study banking, then as a braider to support herself and relatives back home. Two years ago, she caught a break when a customer created a TikTok about her strip-mall shop, raving about its efficiency and prices.
The shop survived the coronavirus pandemic with a strong customer base and a community of braiders who Djuiko, 36, says make her feel like she’s in her African homeland. She is part of a growing share of the Prince George’s Black population: African immigrants and their children. The county was home to nearly 54,000 African immigrants in 2019, according to data from the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research, and the county has an African Diaspora Advisory Board.
Many of Djuiko’s workers are refugees or asylum seekers who have fled Cameroon’s ongoing war and who rely on their braiding income to support families back home as they establish a life in the Bowie area. Knowing so many of her staff have their livelihood — and that of their families — dependent on each braid, is a stress that drapes around Djuiko’s shoulders like goddess locs. A rare slow day, a mishap, or customers who run out of the salon without paying add to that worry.
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That’s why she’ll open at 4 a.m. on Thanksgiving. Some of her braiders didn’t want to miss time to work.
“We’re passing a hard time in Cameroon,” Djuiko said. “Most of them have a huge responsibility of taking care of their parents and siblings. Some of them have to pay back the money they were loaned to come to America. … Some people wake up in the morning [and hear] that [attackers] kidnapped their sister or their child. They still have to survive here and pay the rent.”
Djuiko, who recently gave birth to her fifth child, runs on less than three hours of sleep each night, staying glued to her phone that knows no reprieve from customers verifying the costs of styles before their visit to the shop. The salon is so swamped that her husband, Jules-Valey Djouonda, suggested his wife stop braiding and focus on supervising. He recently quit his job in information technology to help her manage the salon.
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“This business is a blessing but it also comes with a lot of pressure,” she said one day as braiders swarmed her with pictures of styles and sought confirmation of prices. “Everyone wishes to be successful but no one realizes the burden of that success.”
From Cameroon to America
Djuiko began braiding as a little girl in Cameroon, where the practice is stitched into the culture. Her father would grow his hair long and allow her to experiment on him as long as she would undo the braids when she was done.
Braiding became a shared skill among schoolgirls who would plait each other’s hair on the weekends so they would be fresh for inspection by schoolteachers who would send children home if their hair was unkempt, Djuiko said.
“Most of us, we learn how to do hair without the intention of becoming a braider,” she said in a firm voice softened by the rhythms of her first language. “I made my first money doing hair here, not home.”
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Djuiko landed in St. Cloud, Minn., in August 2009 on a student visa, hoping to study banking at St. Cloud State University. She was accepted but never enrolled because she couldn’t afford the fees, she said. Needing to earn money, Djuiko sought out opportunities to braid.
The unfamiliar land, weather and clientele were unnerving for Djuiko, who found herself auditioning for a spot at a braiding shop by braiding a White person’s hair.
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“For the first time, I’m not only touching a White person’s hair but I’m touching a White guy,” she said, recalling that the texture was much different from what she was used to. She earned $35 for about 90 minutes of work, got the position and began sending money to Cameroon to help her mother.
When options to remain in Minnesota dwindled, she connected with a family friend in Prince George’s who offered her an apartment to share with other women who were braiding for a living in Bowie.
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She boarded a bus for a two-day journey to Bowie and has called it home for more than a decade.
Striking out on her own
Djuiko worked at 13 shops over at least four years before trusting suggestions that she open her own place, she said. She started slowly, braiding clients’ hair in her home. When she could afford the rent, she opened her shop at the West Bowie Village shopping plaza in 2015.
At first, Djuiko was seeing fewer than 10 clients a day. To generate more business, she placed signs in locations with a heavy presence of Black women, such as the campus of Howard University and in Largo and Lanham.
When coronavirus restrictions shut down the shop for about two months, Djuiko wanted to try something different in an attempt to bring back customers. “We figured out that people must be broke, and if we happen to keep the same prices, we cannot differentiate ourselves,” she said.
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Djuiko advertised a $150 special for medium-size, waist-length knotless braids with hair extensions included — a service that can take upward of seven hours and cost nearly three times that price. Customers began flocking to the shop.
Djuiko asked her stylists to tap into their networks of friends and family about braiding at the shop. The need for more braiders buzzed throughout many of the Cameroonian circles in the area. One friend would lead to another and one woman would bring another, increasing Djuiko’s workforce of fast, adroit braiders.
Her salon is reminiscent of braiding stalls peppered throughout many West African countries, where remnants of hair extensions dust the floor like tumbleweeds as braiders shift back and forth from French to English while sectioning, twisting and dipping hair in boiling water to seal the ends.
Since the TikTok video went viral, some users lament the haywire atmosphere, wait times and attitudes. The negative reviews gnaw at Djuiko.
She’s facing a complaint from May 2021 alleging “uneven and huge parts” as well as inconsistencies in the braids from the front and the back as a result of Djuiko’s braiders and herself, according to court records. Djuiko says she attended a hearing on the matter but the woman who filed the complaint did not show up.
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Djuiko closed her shop for a day in early October to mitigate complaints she thinks were spurred by hastiness to braid the next head for a buck. (Braiders keep 50 percent of the cost of a style and split the difference among themselves, she says.)
The constant juggling of her shop and home life and small windows of rest still aren’t enough for her to want to return to how things were before 2020, she says. She’s searching for a larger place that can seat 100 people or more but hasn’t found a suitable location.
“I wished to be busy. I wished to be up there [at the top],” she said. “When you get there, you realize that it is a lot.”
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