The Woman Whose Hair is Longer Than a Bus
A black woman named Mrs. Asha Mandela has been growing her hair for over 25 years. Her hair has grown so long it is longer that a coach bus whose average length according to dimensions.com is 39.4 ft. The length of Mrs. Mandela’s hair is reported by Daily Mail Online to be 55 ft long. For her long her, Mrs Mandela, according to HuffPost, held a Guinness World Record for the “World’s Longest Dreadlocks” since 2008. However, HuffPost reports that in 2009, Guinness World Record retired the record because Guinness World Record decided that it is no longer possible to measure the authenticity of her dreadlocks due to expert methods employed in the attachment of hair extensions or re-attachment of broken off dreadlocks and that the dreadlocks could be an artificial extension of her natural hair. In 2013, Mirror reported 47 as the age of Mrs Mandela. Inferring from the report, Mrs. Mandela started growing her hair around the age of 23.
According to the YouTube documentary video above, Mandela’s hair weighed 39 pounds. When walking, she carries her hair in a cloth at her back like the way Africans carries their babies at their back.
Image source: Facebook
The video reports that, doctors have warned her that she could get paralyzed due to the weight and length of her hair. However, Mrs. Mandela said that after 25 years of growing her hair, her hair has become pair of her. She said firmly that she will never cut her hair. Mrs. Mandela’s hair was officially measured to be 19ft, 6 inches long which won her Guinness World Record. Over the years, unofficially, a strand of her hair was found to be 55ft long. She revealed in the video that she used to wash her hair 3 times a week but she was told that washing her hair 3 times a week was too much and so she reduced the washing to once a week. Once her hair is washed, it takes 2 days to dry. Mrs. Mandela feels excited about her hair despite the challenges it poses to her.
