In Africa, where there are dreadlocks, there are white tourists being preyed upon

Guides, maps and tourist fact-boxes often adopt little pictorial symbols: shorthand icons that signal key facts or recommendations. A tiny canoe, and parasol, for example, indicate boating facilities, plus a beach. But less common have been warning shorthands designed positively to identify an unpleasantness or something to avoid. How about (for instance) an overflowing dustbin with wavy lines above it, for instance, indicating ‘smelly’; earmuffs against a hotel’s name, as a ‘noisy’ warning; or a trouser pocket with a wad of notes sticking out: ‘pickpockets operate here’?

Since returning last month from Africa, I’ve been ruminating on the need for at least one new icon, in symbolic form, to be placed in the margin against any description of the hotel, market, or tourist attraction under discussion. The icon would consist in a small, stylised representation, perhaps just in silhouette, of some Rastafarian-style dreadlocks.

A word here about dreadlocks to those who do not know Africa, or know only its tourist hotspots. Real Africans don’t do dreadlocks. It isn’t, properly speaking, an African thing. It’s a Western look. If, with the tightly curled black hair that most black Africans have, you want a variation from that style, you might as a woman sport the elaborate and beautiful tiny plaits one sometimes sees. Some women (few men) straighten their hair; and in men or women it can be clipped quite hard against the scalp, or allowed to luxuriate.

But the dreadlocks look — an intense kind of ringlet where strands fuse into a flail of single ropes — is really West Indian in origin. It is associated with the Rastafarian tendency and may be said, at least in theory, to come from Ethiopia, which Rastas hold to be their spiritual home; but I’ve seen more dreadlocks in Kingston, Jamaica, or in Peckham, south-east London, than in Addis Ababa.