Chapter 5 Abanoma the Miss Ghana Contestant

My mother had remarried by the time I completed secondary school. It was her second attempt at the sacred institution that is said to have been ordained by God. After her divorce from the father of my two siblings, and after having me with Mr. Nelson, she was alone for a long time before she gave marriage another shot. This time, it was with one Mr. Benky, who also lived in Dansoman. When she moved to Mr. Benky's house, she went with me, her youngest child. It was yet another chapter of my life that came with humiliation. The family of Mr.

Benky did not make any attempt to hide their dislike and disdain for my mother and me. It was as if they had sworn to torment us until we were fed up enough to leave the house. When they wanted to whine or say something disparaging about me, something they ordinarily would say out of earshot, they said it in a way that would make me hear it. They would say it in a way that would hurt me. For instance, they knew my name, but among themselves, they called me "Abanoma." So, instead of "Where is Yvonne?" they would shout, "Where is the Abanoma?" "What is the meaning of abanoma?" I asked my mother one day. "It means a stepchild," she explained. That I was a step-child to Mr. Benky was a fact of life. But did they have to rub it in my face whenever they wanted to say something unpleasant? Well, I could not correct them or stop them from using that name in a way that connoted more illegitimacy than just a way of identifying the person being described. I was used to hearing worse things about me. As harsh as "abanoma" sounded, it was still milder than my own mother reminding me that I was born out of a mistake. As hurtful as it was, it was better than knowing that I was a symbol of regret for the woman who brought me here. It was, however, not the harshest condition I faced in that house. My room in Mr. Benky's house was truly befitting of an "abanoma". When I first got to the house, the room I was given happened to belong to a daughter of Mr. Benky. She was at the time outside the country. When the real daughter returned, the stepdaughter had to vacate the room. I was given an adjoining bedroom that shared the same bathroom and toilet with the bedroom of my mother and my stepfather. In order to safeguard their privacy, the opening between the two bedrooms was blocked. Part of the wall of my room on the opposite side was broken to create an outlet to and from my room. That came with its own issues. To access my room, I had to go through the guest toilet. Part of the wall that was broken to create the new outlet was not plastered. But that was the least of my worries. When Mr. Benky's children decided to watch television in the living room for hours, water from the leaking air conditioner dripped into my room so I had to keep an eye on the container that was used to collect the water from the air conditioner. On occasions that I went out and the air conditioner functioned the whole day, I returned to a room flooded with water. Apart from this ordeal, I didn't have a bathroom of my own, after being blocked out of the shared bathroom and toilet meant for the room I occupied. I used the guest toilet, but when I had to bathe, I did it behind my room, near the dogs' kennel. This meant I didn't have the freedom to bathe at any time of the day. I did so under the cover of darkness and I had to first ensure that there wasn't anybody peeping into the compound before I undressed and took my bath. I was hitting 20 and my feminine features were ripe and in their prime. It was the time I was most sensitive to my body and valued my privacy the most, but being in a hostile terrain, I had to cope with what I had and forget about what I needed or deserved. My female friends who visited and had to bathe also went through this adventure. When I could no longer bear it, I asked my mother to let me go back to our house. She agreed, but I wasn't going back to the comfort I had vacated. My mother had rented the main building out, and my sister, who had married, lived in the boys' quarters with her family. My brother lived in the extension upstairs and the only space left at the time was a tiny room in the middle, which did not have a toilet or bath. I remember Irene Logan, the Ghana-based Liberian singer who won the 2006 Stars of the Future reality show, once visited me and when I told her my room had no toilet and bath, she was surprised. Having to go outside the room into the compound to access a toilet and a bath was uncomfortable, especially late in the night or when it rained, but it was normal to me. The only abnormality was that I was no longer a normal girl struggling to pass her exam and enter the university. I was on my way to stardom. It began with a beauty pageant. Some of the best things that have happened to me came through an angel with whom God blessed me as a friend. Karen Okata Boateng is one of those friends who stick tighter and love deeper than family. We both attended secondary school in Cape Coast, but that was not the reason we were friends. I was closer to Lerease than Karen because Lerease and I lived a few blocks apart. However, in my moment of failure, Karen did not make me feel inadequate. She is the type of friend who believes in you more than you believe in yourself. It was Karen who first mooted the idea of me contesting the Miss Ghana beauty pageant. It was in 2005, and I was yet to go to the university. Those were the days when the pageant carried a lot of prestige and was highly coveted and I didn't see myself anywhere near the crown. "You're tall, intelligent and beautiful. Why don't you go for Miss Ghana?" I remember Karen telling me. It sounded good to be told this, but my immediate response was selfdoubt. The contestants were often university graduates or students of tertiary institutions, but I was neither a graduate nor a student in any tertiary institution. Karen was relentless. She said she knew someone who could guide and advise me if I agreed to take part. That person was Stacy Amoateng of TV3's Music Music fame. The audition had started, and when we eventually approached the organisers, they said we had to go through the process. Their main concern was my weight, but I promised to work on it. It wasn't just a promise I made to persuade them. I was determined to do that. With the help of Karen, we went to Dansoman Roundabout and bought four-inch high-heeled shoes. While I was dieting and exercising to shed some weight, I was also learning to walk like a model. It wasn't an easy task for a girl who was a tomboy, but there was the will. And, with the help of Karen, I found a way. In 2005, Shirley Frimpong Manso's Sparrow Productions was the franchise holder of the Miss Ghana pageant. Our base was the office of Sparrow Productions. The competition was keen. When you have 10 young women fighting for a crown, fighting to catch the attention and win the favour of organisers, fighting to impress the judges of the competition and the voting Ghanaian public; the good, the bad, and the ugly side of the competition could not be exaggerated. The organisers seemed to have their favourites, and I believed I wasn't anybody's favourite. However, I won the favour of the audience. On the Saturday before the grand finale, I was featured on the front page of The one of the top weekend publications at the time. Many in the competition thought I was influential enough to get it done for me or that I paid for it. If anybody paid money on my behalf, I did not know. I had no such influence or cash to sponsor a front-page publication. I felt I was just lucky and had favour where it mattered. It was also, perhaps, because I was tipped to win the contest and those who wanted to sell their papers obviously wanted to associate with the best, the potential winner. A Ghana News Agency report on the grand finale of the 2005 Miss Ghana competition, which is still online, said the following of the expected outcome of the contest that night: "The contest was a straight fight between Lamisi Mbilla and Yvonne Nelson, who also won the most talented and photogenic lady and took home 2 million [today's 200] cedis." It is true that I won two individual awards on the night and was tipped to be crowned Miss Ghana. Before the final announcement, however, I knew my fate. I knew I would not wear the crown. The miracle I hoped would happen did not. So, I was not surprised I missed out. I had fumbled when it was my turn to answer the question that was asked the final five contestants from whom the first three winners would be picked. I remember, backstage, Shirley Frimpong Manso came to hold me tenderly and asked, "Yvonne, why?" She and I didn't have a close relationship, but I imagined she was rooting for me to win. That slip obviously took me out of the frontrunners at that point of the race. It was the wish of many that I would emerge with the crown, but it did not happen. I didn't make the headlines. Lamisi Mbillah of the University of Ghana made headlines as Miss Ghana 2005. The first runner-up was also a University of Ghana student, Ursula Naa Dei Neequaye, while Maame Afua Anne Darko of the University of Cape Coast was adjudged the second runner-up. I entered the competition because I wanted to win. To lose the crown, especially in the manner in which it happened, was painful. Seeing that the first three winners were all university students and I was a secondary school leaver who had not qualified to enter the university increased the intensity of my desire to excel academically, even if my version of excellence, in my wildest imagination, was just the opportunity to gain admission into a university. Looking back, however, I do not regret not winning the beauty pageant. The odds that I would not have been here if I had won that contest are very high. I would have spent eternity basking in the glory and opportunities that came with the crown. My life would have been defined by the rules governing the competition. I don't know whether I would have survived the trappings of the fame that came with being Miss Ghana. I know I would have ceased to be an ordinary girl. The restricting power of living according to other people's expectations of Miss Ghana may have prevented me from being who I wanted to be. It could have stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. The Miss Ghana pageant, however, gave me some exposure that would later serve as a launchpad to something greater. At the time I lost the crown, I had no bragging rights to anything I was proud of. The benefit I had derived from my education until that stage of my life was entertainment. The singing, dancing and mounting of the stage at St. Martin de Porres and Aggrey Memorial came in handy during the Miss Ghana contest. I was adjudged the most talented contestant because I had spent much of my life singing and dancing. I wrote the rap songs I performed in that competition. My fumbling at the intellectual test was what cost me a crown, and I vowed not to let anything come between me and my education should I pass the Nov-Dec. While I was pushing and fighting for my own way, Providence seemed to have the final say. A golden opportunity, out of nowhere, jolted me pleasantly. Princess Tyra It is said that the big game often appears when the hunter has given up the hunt for the day. I cannot say I had completely given up on life's hunting, but it was a thought that creeped in and out of my mind as I confronted my world. My life at that moment was dogged by what I thought were crushing failures and disappointments. Crashing out of Miss Ghana when the crown was in sight and well within my reach was the defeating icing on my cake of struggle and self-doubt. If I couldn't do well in school, and my only attempt at a competition in the entertainment industry did not work, where else could I make it? I would later learn that it was only a matter of time. When that time was ripe, I didn't have to struggle or fight for the tight window of opportunity that allowed the glowing rays of hope into my life once again. It happened as though I was cast in a movie whose perfect script was written and directed by Providence, and I was merely a favoured cast. In reality, that's how I entered the movie industry-effortlessly. It was in 2006, and I was with Karen Okata, the bearer of my luck charm. Even when she didn't have to play an active role, Karen was always connected in some way to the monumental epochs of my life. It so happened that she was with me when I bumped into what would turn out to be the golden door that opened priceless opportunities for me. We had gone to Afrikiko, a middle-class eatery and recreational centre in Accra, to buy fried rice. A friend I had met in my Miss Ghana days and I were in the car while Karen went into the restaurant to get us the food, which we intended to take away. When Karen kept too long, my hunger pangs nudged me to follow up to see what was holding her up. It was on my way to the restaurant that I bumped into Abdul Salam Mumuni, a renowned movie producer in Ghana. When he mentioned his name, I instantly recognised him, for he was a household name in the entertainment industry and I had watched a number of movies from his Venus Productions. I am not sure whether he also made me out, but, having taken part in Miss Ghana and come close to winning, he probably knew who I was. "Are you coming for the audition?" he asked me after the introduction. I had no idea he was auditioning for his next movie, and I told him just that. I was there for food and nothing was going to distract me. Even when he invited me to join in the audition, I didn't have any difficulty choosing food over a potential movie role that day. That was how the brief encounter endedwithout any interest or commitment from my side. In the entertainment industry, music was my first love. I had acted in school, but at the time I met Abdul Salam, as he's popularly known, I wasn't excited about the prospects of being on the screen, especially when my first two attempts had ended in smoke. After Miss Ghana, I had been cast in a television series titled Babe It was a series produced by actress and producer Luckie Lawson, and the entire episode was shot in a barber's shop. It never made it onto television. Before Babe Ivan Quashigah, the producer of Things We Do for featured me in another television series titled Fortune In that series, I played a detective. I was going to crime scenes, examining dead bodies and all that. I don't remember much about the storyline now. At the time I met Abdul Salam, that series too had not yet made it to any screen, so jumping at an impromptu invitation to audition for a movie role was not a particularly exciting prospect. It was part of the reason I didn't regret choosing food over an audition, but I did leave my contact details. That destiny-shaping encounter did not, however, end with my rejection of the invitation to audition. Abdul Salam called later and offered me a role in the movie. I had just started my first year at Central University College (CUC). I had managed to pass my Accounting and Costing after two attempts and applied to CUC to study Human Resource Management. If you asked me why I chose that programme of study, I would struggle for a reason. What I studied at the time was inconsequential to me. What mattered was that I was in the university. I had bought the form and applied quietly. My mother and siblings only got to know about my plans when I was offered admission. It was my moment of pride and the pleasant surprise was acknowledged by my family. Having suffered rejection and humiliation from some of my friends because of my inability to go to the university after secondary school, I had vowed that nothing would stand between me and the degree I desperately needed. I had learned from my basic and secondary education that I was good enough to pass examinations, but my main obstacles were self-imposed obstructions. If I would graduate with a degree after four years, then it all depended on me. CUC is a private university and is more expensive than a public university. At the time, the fees at CUC were about four times what my mates paid at public universities in Ghana. I could not afford to waste my mother's colossal investment and leave after four years with nothing to show. This was what made it difficult to accept Abdul Salam's offer of a movie role. After some persuasion, however, I gave it a try, but with a grim determination not to let that derail my academic journey. The first movie I featured in was Beyonce. It had Nadia Buari as the lead actor and I played a role that my Nigerian colleagues in the movie industry call a decorated walker I was merely decorated to walk past, without anything notable in my appearance. I was the lead actor's friend and I played only one scene that had lines. Various reviews of the movie online do not have my name as part of the cast, and that is perfectly understandable. I was almost anonymous. My breakthrough didn't take long to come. It came with an urgent call, again, from Abdul Salam. I was in the lecture hall and stepped out to answer the call. He needed me for a movie role. The crew and cast were already on location and I had to come straight away, he said on the phone. When I got there, my costumes were ready. I was dressed like a princess and asked to go on set. The conventional processes of being given a script, mastering it and attending script conferences or rehearsals were all side-stepped. It appeared someone had been given that role but had to be replaced. An improvised cast was expected to take her place, so the lots fell on me. With verbal instruction on who I was and what I was expected to do, I was thrust onto the set, like a fat goat being thrown into a den of ravenous hyenas. That was how I felt when the unmasked disapproval of my inclusion was communicated in the most unvarnished of languages. I fumbled on set. I felt uncomfortable in the costume. I had no time to psychologically prepare myself for the role. But here I was acting in a movie that had my character as the title. The movie was Princes And I was Princess Tyra. In that movie, Kofi Adjorlolo was my father, the king. He got so frustrated with my acting that he walked off the set in protest and told Abdul Salam to replace me. (A few years later, I cast Kofi Adjorlolo in a movie I produced). The director, Frank Raja Arase, did not have any hope in me either. I felt terrible, lost confidence and became anxious. Princess Tyra had a number of maids. I confided in one of them that that day was going to be the last time they would see me. I had endured enough embarrassment and was not going to show up again. What I said got into the ears of Abdul Salam Mumuni, and he spent a considerable amount of time convincing me not to abandon the project. It appeared he was the only one in the production team who had confidence in my ability to act. Rooting for me sparked wild rumours that he had something to do with me, the only possible reason he wanted me around despite my abysmal performance. I later learnt that the line between that perception and the reality in the movie industry was imperceptible. It is true that most movie producers in the industry take advantage of women who need opportunities. It is almost a norm that you cannot break through with just your talent. If you are a woman, you have to give something to get something. If a male producer was resisting all pressures to dismiss a young woman, the only possible reason among those present, therefore, was that the two were involved in something beyond the movie. The movie industry is one of the most hostile environments for young and budding talents. There isn't much encouragement from senior colleagues, especially among women. A new entrant is often seen as a competitor who is there to take someone's shine or snatch a role meant for them. The default position of the old guns is hostility and a silent prayer for the novice to fail. There are, however, a few with exceptionally kind hearts. One such person is Jackie Appiah. Jackie Appiah was one of my maids in Princess She was the maid Van Vicker, my lover prince from another kingdom, fell in love with. Jackie had made quite a name for herself in the industry even before I entered, but she didn't at any point make me feel less of myself. She treated me well and gave me all the encouragement. Apart from the convincing Abdul Salam did when he learned of my intention to abandon the production, Jackie made my stay less of a burden. Of hostilities on set, I must say I also felt very comfortable whenever I was on set with Majid Michel. I had a change of mind after the encouragement from the producer so I decided to give Princess Tyra my level best. I summoned courage, gathered confidence and faced my fears. If people think you're not good enough, the most appropriate response is to show, rather than tell them what you can do. Instead of abandoning the movie, I stayed and fought on. And the rest, as they say, is history. The opening of Princess Tyra lists the stars as Van Vicker, Jackie Appiah, Kofi Adjorlolo, Kalsoume Sinare, Rama Brew, Gavivina Tamakloe and: "Introducing Yvonne Nelson." Princess Tyra was well-received, and it is still one of my biggest movies of all time. It was big in the fame and opportunities it gave me. I earned 1.5 million cedis from that movie. Today (in November 2022) that is 150 cedis or $11. At the time, however, it was worth about $100. That was half of the amount I earned for participating in Miss Ghana. I had saved the entire amount I earned from Miss Ghana. I also saved the entire money I earned for playing the lead role in Princess Looking back, the financial reward was peanuts, but the exposure that the movie gave me was priceless. I became a household name. My mother could not hide her pride when a church member at Mount Olivet Methodist Church in Dansoman approached her after church one Sunday and all she had to tell my mother was how well I acted in that "popular movie". Prior to that, I had been a nuisance that was barely tolerated whenever I returned from set late and woke them up to open the gate for me. I remember my mother once remarked that I always said I was acting, but there was nothing to show for it. The release of Princess Tyra changed everything. My status at home changed. My brother and sister now saw me as a celebrity sister. The posters of celebrities that littered the walls of my room were still there, but the disdain that had accompanied them vanished overnight. There was respect for my name at home and my sister even added "please" to the words she spoke to me. The recognition went beyond my family. I attracted more movie roles from other producers and I started starring in movies that had me as the main character or the only big-name character driving the movie. The movies I featured in after Princess Tyra are Passion and Soul, The Prince's Bride, Material Girl, Playboy, Heart of Men, The Ga me, and 4play among others. I did not, however, have a smooth sail. The fame and its trappings, the opportunities and the rewards and my journey to the top were rudely interrupted. It came from the least expected source, where my breakthrough began.