Confidence in cosmetics

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This article was published 05/05/2018 (2987 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Francine Bahati is the founder of Queenfidence Cosmetics, a line of lipsticks that are gluten-free, paraben-free and vegan-friendly.

One of her most popular shades is called Fearless, but that didn’t exactly describe her state of mind Dec. 23, 2017, as she was getting set to host her official launch party in a conference room at the Travelodge Winnipeg East.

Because it was so close to Christmas, Bahati was scared “the whole world” would be at the mall, and nobody would show up. So as the line of women and teenage girls waiting to purchase her lipstick grew longer and longer, the 27-year-old entrepreneur almost had to pinch herself, to be certain what she was witnessing was actually taking place.

“This business had been a dream of mine since I was a little kid so to finally have it all come true and have people actually spend money on my product? Well, I must have used the word amazing 100 times that night, to express how I was feeling inside.”

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Bahati was born in Kiliba, a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, near its border with Burundi. In 2002, she and her family were forced to flee their home as a result of the Second Congo War, a bloody conflict that displaced 2 million Congolese and, with an estimated 5.4 million casualties, has been described as the deadliest conflict worldwide since the Second World War.

“Our dad, who worked in a sugar factory, had to leave first when the Congolese soldiers started assuming power in our region of the country,” Bahati says, seated in a West Broadway coffee shop a few blocks from where she lives. “Until we got a letter from him, telling us he had safely reached Uganda, our neighbour to the east, we weren’t sure whether he was dead or alive.”

Upon receiving the news, Bahati, along with her mother, five sisters and two brothers “basically ran” from their hometown to Goma, a city in the northeast part of the DRC. There, members of the Red Cross helped them reach Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, where Bahati’s father was awaiting their arrival.

While many people in their situation were forced to live in refugee camps in western Uganda, Bahati’s parents opted to remain in Kampala, where, for the next 10 years, a dozen family members, including an aunt and uncle, made do in a “ramshackle” one-bedroom apartment, on the outskirts of the city of 2 million residents.

Life was difficult, Bahati says. Without pillows and mattresses, her family slept on makeshift piles of clothes donated to them by neighbours. And because all the money their father earned working part-time in a nearby church went to food and rent, it was impossible for all eight siblings to attend school, she says.

“Because you had to pay (to go to school), we told our dad to send the youngest ones only, as that was all he could afford,” says Bahati, who often heard people she passed in the street chiding her, saying she and her sisters should prostitute themselves to help her parents make ends meet.

“Of course that was never an option. All the time, we used to tell ourselves today things might not be good, but we know that tomorrow they will be better.”

During the decade Bahati spent in Uganda, there were two things she relied upon to maintain some degree of normalcy in her life. The first was music: she and her sisters found refuge in singing, she says, and, after being “discovered” by members of their church choir, they were finally able to attend school themselves, thanks to the generosity of their fellow parishioners. (Bahati and three of her sisters eventually formed a pop group, the Bahatizz, a play on their surname, which enjoyed some success in Uganda with their debut single, Don’t Give Up.)

 

https://youtu.be/pA1gSaQMUAo

 

Second, she had a soft spot for makeup.

“As a young girl in Congo, I witnessed my mother’s sense of fashion and beauty,” she says, taking a sip of her double-double. “Obviously my mother couldn’t afford to buy makeup items for my sisters and me when we were in Kampala, but I improvised by using palm oil — an African cooking oil — as lipstick and lip gloss, and chalk as face powder.”

With the assistance of Hospitality House Refugee Ministry, Bahati and her family were able to leave Uganda for Winnipeg, where some of their relatives had already settled, in 2014. While the city’s Congolese community granted them a warm, Winnipeg welcome, the weatherman wasn’t quite as accommodating, she says with a laugh.

“We arrived here Dec. 4 and it was the first time any of us had seen snow, except for in the movies,” she continues. “People from Hospitality House tried to warn us, telling us it was going to be cold, but nothing could have prepared us for how cold ‘cold’ actually was. Even though I had a jacket and thought I was dressed warmly, I remember asking somebody, ‘Do people really live here year-round? How do they survive?’ “

One of the first things Bahati did was attain her Grade 12 equivalency through an adult-education course. Following that, she completed a legal assistant course at Robertson College, all the while working various part-time jobs, making sure to put a few dollars aside every payday to save for her ultimate dream, her own cosmetics company.

“There was about two years of research involved, plus lots of back and forth with different manufacturers and chemists,” she says. “Some of the things I didn’t like about other people’s lipstick were how you needed to reapply it every four hours, or how, when you took a drink of your coffee or whatever, it stayed on the glass or mug. That’s what I wanted to eliminate, as well as make something natural that didn’t involve animal products, testing on animals or anything like that.”

Bahati offers five shades of lipstick, all of which are suitable for any skin tone, she says. The University of Winnipeg student (she intends to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2019) draws inspiration for new hues while walking around her favourite spots in town, namely Assiniboine Park and The Forks.

“We’re so lucky in Winnipeg to have four distinct seasons, and each season has its own shades,” she says, answering, “Oh my gosh, definitely” when asked if Winnipeg feels like home. “So yeah, when I’m out and about, I’m always wondering what shades go best with the whites of winter, or the greens of summer.”

Sure, Bahati’s ultimate goal is for Queenfidence to be a runaway success and to have her products “in every retail store you can think of.” But there is a second aim she is even more excited about, which is to have Queenfidence serve as an inspiration for new Canadians, to show them no matter how dire their lives might have been in the past, there’s always something better waiting around the corner.

“We know there are people who have come to Canada, just like us, who have lost all hope. They’ve already been through so much and when they get here, they tend to set their bar low. I want my story to serve as a point of reference for them — that they should always set their bar as high as possible. I want Queenfidence to stand for self-positivity and perseverance.”

For more information, and to see where Bahati’s lipsticks are available for sale, go to www.queenfidencecosmetics.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca