Hello. I've been on this natural journey for two weeks now and I've had one big question going on in my head for some time.. my hair is about three inches long when I stretch it out from my matted Afro. It looks like I my hair is shorter due to my hair scrunching up and twisting in balls. I want my dreads to form nice and Congo. My question is should I finger pick my hair or comb it so that it will dread better or leave it as it is? I'm African American btw. Kind of like what bob Marley did with his fro. Let it grow long and than start the neglect method.
updated by @kenan-thomas: 01/13/15 09:52:13PM
should i comb out afro and start there or leave it alone?
I am confused by your statement. You want your hair to "form nice and congo" (I'm assumingcongruent). But on the flip side you want to grow it out long and then the "neglect" method?
There are several styles people of African descent can do in order to develop dreadlocks (I am also of African descent). You are mentioning two very different methods (of a multitude to start with). The two you are basically describing are the manicured look= nice and congo and the freeform method = "neglect".I find the congruent look or manicured look to be a style because it can be done on any size locs. While the neglect or freeform is both a style and a method of locking the hair.
You need to be sure of which style you're going for. 
freeform is Bob Marley style. You do nothing but let it do it's thing. You might want to pull from time to time though in order to develop parts because you could develop one or two dreds depending on texture of your afro hair.
OrIf you want congruent(well maintined) locs then you're looking at something like the above.
If you plan on doing the freeform method-- that happens naturally. Don't touch your hair and it will freeform on it's on. You will get varying sizes some chunky and some not. I am a semi-freeformer. Meaning that I did go to a loctician or do the grids myself, but I maintain the parts (ie retwist) about every 4 months. My locs are rather on the chunky side.
If you want the first you can do it yourself if you are adept, but you might want to go to a loctician so they could get the grid (the square lines that look like graph paper lines on a clean set of locs) in order you want and they can help differentiate the thickness you would like. Chunky marker size to pencil size.
I can't recommend the best style or method for you, because you don't seem to know the differences in the styles or methods you may want. I recommend doing a search on youtube for freeformers or dreadlocs---and go for the women of color like quotidian light----she has congruent thick locs, she's a semi-freeformer I believe. You could also look at Damian Walters on youtube - doesn't have dreds but he is a loctician. I won't comment on his service, ugh. But his videos are great to get an idea of where you want to go and how to take care of your hair. Napzfaya is someone who went from manicured to freeforming and you can watch zayloc23 who went on a spiritual journey which led from manicured to freeform locs. There is also cupidvalentino1 who has the most kickass locs around and has always been a freeformer. As mentioned all these people are on youtube.
HTH
Vabby
congo means lerting the dreads dread together he wants natural not manicured manicured is extremely bad for the dreads
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