WeeklySA_AdminQUALIFIED: Helping others to turn heads around
By Bongiwe Mkhwanazi
TAYLOR’S Hair Design is a popular salon in Soweto because its owner is an industrious innovator who strives to improve his knowledge and expertise while also helping to nurture others.
Personal care practitioner Taylor Maseko from Meadowlands, Soweto also seems to believe that any thriving hair stylist should also double up as a therapist, once in a while. Maseko, 52, who started his career aged 15 in 1984 for bus fare and pocket money, says he was motivated by a local hairstylist in Meadowlands who had a contagious passion for treating other people’s hair, and also had an undying empathy for others, especially those who were going through hardships.
According to Maseko, an example of this had occurred, one day, when they were attending to a customer who was seemingly suffering from depression. “The client had not straightened her braids or washed her locks for a long time, about three months. So, instead of cutting the customer’s unkempt hair, spent several hours unpicking the tangled-up braids, which had then refashioned into fancy dreadlocked strands,” Maseko said. He said, in all, they had spent about ten hours with the downhearted woman; four hours of which they had unpicked the braids, two hours to comb the hair, and the remaining few hours to dye her hair. Then they had washed the hair, then implanted a number of new hair extensions.
“By the time the woman walked out of our salon, she was happy and free of any possible anxiety; and I could also feel that the stress she, too, had brought on us had also vanished with her previously unclean and dishevelled hair. And, from that day, I had also learnt that hairdressers also had to offer therapy to clients,” Maseko said. When he turned 22, Maseko did his trade test at the Department of Labour-accredited Indlela Trade Centre in Olifantsfontein in Ekurhuleni and obtained an artisanship recognition certificate based on the recognition and acknowledgement of his prior learning in the personal care sector.
Maseko said he was able to start his own venture after he had saved R80 000. He subsequently registered with the Service Sector Education and Training Authority (Services Seta) as a registered facilitator, coach and assessor. This has enabled him to train others, especially youths, so that they, too, could pursue careers in hairdressing.
“I also provide training, mainly theory and upon completion I take the learners on specialised internship programmes to assist them in gaining experience, and also help them to gain workplace exposure and experience,” Maseko said.
