African braiding in streets of Cebu On sinulog while promoting steemit, a @steemph.cebu organized event.

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Exactly a week and 4 days ago, Cebu celebrated its grandest festival , Sinulog.
The Sinulog is of course religious, but it is more than that. It is about history, It is about culture, It is about the spirit of acceptance and brotherhood, It is what makes Cebu,Cebu.
Aside from the grand parade, colorful costumes , parties and the beauty of the festival, its also a time where business owners and business enthusiasts around the city and far earn a little bit of extra revenue.

Now Imagine foreigners on the streets spreading the braid culture. I mean 4 African women putting chairs on the busy Sinulog hype to braid.

Of course this would have absolutely been impossible if not for the unwavering support of the @steemph.cebu team.

This is how it all Happened,

Owning and managing a small but growing hair braiding business, i could only be limited by my thoughts.
Because braids are just right for a festival, i wanted to have a stall right where the annual sinulog market is, that way i would attract more customers. This was a risk i was willing to take. Being a foreigner, i was limited in terms of information and how to go about it. With few inquiries here and there, my initial ideas and plan crashed as i was told its expensive and i really did not have the amount to spare. I asked for help from a close filipina friend who i believed could help me pull it off with less or no expenses but she non challantly pushed the idea away.
Days went by, festival was getting closer and i was getting anxious.

Thank God We had a lot of bookings, through my facebook marketing skills,i will blog about this in another article as it will drive away the sole purpose of this blog.

Despite being fully booked and working odd hours on days leading to sinulog, i still felt the need to be present at the festival. Thankfully @fernwehninja had mentioned something to me about @steemph.cebu participating in the festival and having a booth at a suitable location during the parade, and i said to myself why not try and ask her.
I brought the idea to Rose (@fernwehninja) of me and my team to join @steemph.cebu and without second thoughts she was lit with the idea. @fernwehninja gladly embraced it and told me she will communicate to the team so they see how to fix me in their program and set up.
prior to the sinulog day, the @steemph.cebu team was busy preparing for the grand event , we even bought tshirts for sinulog with a steemit logo.

Fast forward to sinulog day, woke up early, @ferwehninja had confirmed to me that the team agreed for me and my team to braid by the booth. I was very grateful, more so because they have been a great support here on steemit and now they were extending it to the real world. We made a list of cute simple braiding hair styles and put at a super affordable price, at least 50% off our regular price. Reason for this is to attract more customers, and tell them about steemit, an awesome platform that enables you to earn through blogging, killing 2 birds with one stone!

Our first customer showing us full support was a fellow steemian @ninyea. She went all in and opened way for other customers, @micch is the one beside her.

Soon before you know it , we had already attracted customers, on lookers and passer bys.

@bellatravelph also gave the cornrow braids a try.

at first she said it was very painfull but later on the pain became bearable.


@itinerantph giving bella emotional support.... lol

and voila!, she loved the end product.

@ferwehninja was the cheerleader for the day, she kept advertising and and calling upon the crowd to come and braid . i remember she would use phrases like " come and braid, its very cheap, very affordable compared to Boracay. 'and when we got a customer to braid, she would grab the opportunity and tell them about steemit, distribute steemit flyers , encourage them to get face paint and tattoos and overall spreading good vibes.

@ninyea did a great job doing the face paints , different people who had come out to watch the sinulog parade branched by to have their free face paint.. most of which was the steemit logo..

of course i had to have my face "beat" as well

@josejirafa was hands on with the tattoos, most of us just ended up having our steemit user names tatted on whatever parts of the body desired. i had mine on my fore arm.

i had never interacted with him before but he was very easy to talk too. He engaged me into a conversation as a way of getting to know more about me and that was very awesome, i love it when people make an effort to have real conversations with me.
He did the name Tatts on almost everybody else/

Rest of the evening went by so fast, most of the steemians that had joined this steemnulog fest had to leave early as they had spent sleepless nights preparing for this event and were up and the scene early in the wee hours of the morning to prepare and set up everything.. more and more power to you guys.

as my steemit support system left, i and my braiding team felt the need to stay, as of this moment we were no longer going to have the booth stand , as it was removed soon after the steemph.cebu team winded up, but we still had our chairs.
so we shifted closer to the streets , placed our chairs there and lay on the ground a display of sample braid styles that we were offering that day. This was such a bold move as we did not have any Local (filipino) with us and was worried that people may not really come through as we were foreigners.
This was true , for a while, we did not have customers coming by at all and i was at this point getting disappointed but then, the masses showed up and we went on braiding non stop until sun set.

in the process of braiding, we got to meet cool people and made quite a handful of friends. sharing laughter, jokes with people on the streets while having hair braided was awesome and reminded me of a typical African setting

To read more about Sinulog 2018, click on steemnulog tag and read more about the posts from fellow steemians that captured the whole festival as i was very held up with the activities at our booth and did not give attention to the parade at all.
This is probably the only photo i took of this one beautiful sinulog queen clad in this very unique costume.

and probably this

The steemit booth was decorated in such a cute and attractive way to catch the public attention. the team had put so much effort into details and getting it all set up. am told they had spent the whole night preparing the art and steemit related photo props such as..

many of steemians passed by the booth during the day to show their support here and there.

most of whom i wasnt able to capture on camera.

This day overall was awesome, way more than i had anticipated. it was not at all about the money, in fact we hardly made any. It was more on spreading the braid culture, sharing it with total strangers and having fun while doing it at the same time promoting steemit.. and it worked out perfectly.
This would have not been a success without the unwavering support of the most awesome team @steemph.cebu. A thank you is not enough for your continued support.

untill next time, thanx for passing by,

xoxo

Maggie.