‘I fell in love with it’
As a mom of four, Djuiko knows women are busy and does whatever she can to accommodate their schedules. The salon opens at 4 a.m. and is open every day of the week. She also allows women to do work on their laptops or in notebooks as they get their hair braided. Not all salons permit it because it causes the clients to bend their necks, making the hair harder to braid.
It’s been difficult to find people passionate, skilled and precise enough to hire as braiders, Djuiko said. There’s also a stigma around hairdressing as a profession, which she thinks prevents some from pursuing it as a career.
“Back home in Cameroon, when I grew up, I used to think that you were doing hair because you weren’t smart enough to go to school. Your parents didn’t have money to send you to school,” she said. “[Some] feel it’s not something they can be proud of doing.”
Djuiko was hesitant about doing hair when she first came to Bowie from Cameroon in 2009.
She apprenticed under a mentor for several weeks unpaid.
“I decided one day that I was going to quit and start looking for a job out there, a regular job like McDonald’s. That weekend I went to the shop. It was a Saturday and it was busy. The lady looked at me and said ‘Nadine can you do it?’ I was so excited. It was my first hair,” Djuiko said.
While her boss was unhappy Djuiko did a style slightly shorter than the client had asked for, the client’s husband loved the look and gave Djuiko a $160 tip.
“I said to myself, ‘This is a sign. I am not going anywhere else. We’re going to die here,’ ” Djuiko said. “That was it. I fell in love with it.”
Even with Djuiko’s recent success, she said the hair braiding business is an unstable one and can be competitive. While opening another store would be nice, she’s seen too many peers fail in the endeavor to feel safe pursuing it. Success in this industry is delicate.
“It’s not the type of business where you can confide in someone. I have to pick up my phone. I can’t let anyone pick it up,” Djuiko said. “It is a business where
it’s easy for someone to steal your clients.”
The internet fame can add stress to the braiders as well, Ndambia said. The salon now has a reputation of efficiency and skill to uphold, and no one wants to let down customers.
While it might have been
TikTok that brought many of them in, it’s the atmosphere of the salon that makes customers stay.
“You feel the love, the energy. The vibe is good,” said Ashlee Williams, who came from Manassas, Virginia, to take her daughter to get her hair done at
Nadine’s. “It’s a great shop.”
As two different women worked on her braids, Kertia McSterling from Upper Marlboro said visiting the salon feels like getting a taste of being in west-central Africa.
“[I like] how I feel when I come and the women are speaking the French and just being close to African sisters,” McSterling said. “We may not know the languages or anything like that anymore, but I still feel a cultural connection.”
“You feel like you’re at the motherland,” Williams said.