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 To corrupt the lyrics of an early Motown hit song, this was a hairstyle that would not be televised or photographed because it is, literally, always kept under wraps. That does not sit well with Tlou's mother, Tsholofelo Morake, who has near given up trying to persuade her daughter to let her hair "breath" on occasion. There are theories about what herbs people who wear dreadlocks are frightfully keen on. To clear doubts anyone may have, Tlou reveals that her dreadlocks are thin and explains further how that piece of information is relevant. "Those who do what you are suggesting have thick dreadlocks," she says laughing. In keeping her dreadlocks under wraps, Tlou has come to perfect a skill that has made her the envy of women both here, at home and abroad. On her trips around the continent, other women ministers gush rhapsodically about how nicely-tied her headscarves are and ask her whether she designs and sells them. Design yes, sell no. Here at home, she draws looks of admiration and envy from her fellow women ministers, spouses of cabinet members as well as from ordinary women. She recalls how, not long ago, a Zion Christian Church woman remarked to her: "Our husbands would give us a hard time because of you. They would want us to wear headscarves as often and as well as you do." There is not a snowball's chance in hell of those who envy Tlou's headscarves ever being able to tie and knot them as well as she does. She has taught only one person how to tie the headscarf like she does and politely turns down requests from all the other envious women. This is how well guarded that secret is: she won't teach even her own mother. "This is my trademark and it is a secret I have bequeathed to my daughter only. My mother has her own trademark. In a way I'm glad that I'm a role model for women and that people see me as a real Motswana woman. I'm not willing to give away my secret though," she explains. Speaking from Serowe, Tlou's mother, says that she still cannot understand why her daughter could do this to her when she is the one who got her into wearing headscarves. "She copied headscarf-wearing from me - ask anyone here and they'll confirm it - but she won't teach me how to tie the headscarf in the sophisticated way only she does. "She says that she fears that I would teach other women," Tlou's mother says. The headscarves that conceal the dread-locked hair complement the African print dresses that the minister wears almost daily. Unlike a good many people who rediscover their Africanness when Westerners snub them, Tlou had a passion for African attire from a young age. The minister, according to her mother, had a good Setswana upbringing. "She even wore makgabe, a traditional chiffon skirt with ropes and beads, when she stayed with my mother. When she became a teenager, she developed a strong liking for the traditional German dresses," Tlou's mother says. There was no fundamental change in Tlou's dress sense when she enrolled at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS). In fact, her intrigue with African dresses became so intense that it went beyond just admiring the dresses in magazines with fellow like-minded students. She got to design her own dresses while still at UBLS, something that she still does to this day. Her husband, Professor Thomas Tlou, is one of those who have benefited from those services. At the age of 22, further studies took her to Dillard University in the city of New Orleans in the US. "New Orleans was where my passion for African fashion intensified. A majority of the city's residents are black and it is difficult to differentiate between African-Americans and Africans. I wore African dresses and headscarves all the time because I wanted to identify myself as such," Tlou says. That may have been very good training for a contest later in which she was crowned 'Miss Foreign Relations'. "The university where I studied was central to the lives of black people in New Orleans and so some of the contestants were residents of the city," she recalls. She still keeps the picture of that moment of glory. The picture bears evidence of a budding headscarf-tying talent. However, when she visits the US nowadays, Tlou says that she does not wear her headscarves for fear of what the humidity might do to her hair. The demands of academia, AIDS activism, government and her family naturally mean that Tlou cannot find enough time to design her dresses. It is for that reason that Pidi Masimege, an old friend from UBLS and a Cameroonian named Sir Gabes, have become her designers. Part of that job includes having to blend red, black and white lengths of cloth for attire that Tlou wears on days that she would be shouting her voice hoarse at Botswana Democratic Party public meetings. Though she has not completely sworn off western haute couture, as much as she can, Tlou says that she tries to adapt it to her own African style. "If for instance, I see a western dress that I like, I would look for a yard of cloth that would match it and make a headscarf," she says. More than making a fashion statement and reaffirming her Africanness, Tlou finds that her attire is appropriate for almost all occasions. "I can use the same attire for different occasions like funerals, weddings, Parliament and kgotla meetings or the opening of the legal year." Loatile Seboni, the executive director of the Young Women Christian Association finds Tlou's "funkiness" a breath of fresh air away from the depressing sight of women who make frumpiness their trademark when they age.
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