These days societal prestige somehow inexplicably has become tied up with the cost of your weave-on. I don’t know when or how it started, but that is the norm these days and our ladies never shy away from getting the most expensive weave they can get their hands on.

Whilst better people than me have gone on rants about how we can tie all our self worth into the type of (other people’s) hair we can put on our head, it seems now to keep up with the insatiable demands of the business, people in China have resorted to adding goat hair to the weaves they export to Africa.

The BBC made a whole report on it, which confirms that goat hair is now a crucial ingredient in the weave-on industry down there. The merchants who buy it and bring it down here to sell know, but they buy it anyway because of the market for it; and I suspect most of us down here also know, or at the very least suspect, but buy anyway.

Unsurprisingly, it also confirmed that Africa is the biggest hair market now. One shopkeeper said most of their business used to be with Europe; now, almost exclusively African buyers.

One such shopkeeper is Lily, and this is what she told the BBC.

“We say it is Indian hair or Brazilian hair, but in fact it is normally Chinese hair or even goat hair. They never realise. This is the only way we can keep things cheap”

But the woman who came to buy to go and sell in Africa, a Ugandan, knew it was goat hair.

“The Chinese think we’re stupid. I come all the way from Uganda and they think I don’t know hair”

The prices those ‘Brazilian’ weaves are sold at is ridiculous, and to think they contain goat hair as well. But then again some people wouldn’t mind at all, anything to look gorgeous.

But they treat them with chemicals and such beforehand, so technically if the final product looks okay, who’s to care where it came from, right?

Now I just got to think up some goat hair themed jokes for some of my more pretentious female friends, going to have a lot of fun with that.

Ladies, does this affect your affection for weaves in anyway, or you knew already and don’t terribly mind?