It was a beautiful November day in 2001 in Calabar, Nigeria. I was a little girl growing up in the municipal area of Calabar. My dad had just returned from an official assignment, and our favourite pastime was watching TV together. While I sat on the plush living room carpet nibbling on peanuts and waiting for my dad to turn on the television, I heard him say, “Oh wow, today is the Miss World Pageant!” My little brown eyes sparkled with excitement. Just a few months earlier, we had watched the Miss Universe Pageant in the same living room, and I was enthralled by the smiling, elegant ladies sashaying down the stage like they had absolutely no care in the world. They looked so exquisite and statuesque. Their bellies were flat (so flat that I wondered whether they had intestines), their legs were long, their faces beaming with smiles, their teeth were so immaculate and their dresses, oh, so gorgeous! I was captivated by how they walked and talked and their good posture while answering questions.
Everything was just beautiful!
I was fascinated by the long runway, the starry lights that constantly changed colours on the stage, and the colourful costumes. For the next few hours, I sat enthralled. I could literally see myself and my dad sitting in the front row of that vast hall shouting and clapping along with hundreds of other people from around the world.
That evening, my life changed. It happened the moment Julia Morley, Chairman and Chief Executive of Miss World Organization, announced a tall, slender, black girl in a green dress as the winner. It’s a moment I will never forget. I screamed as I ran around the living room, strewing peanuts all over the floor. It wasn’t just me; my dad yelled, “Yes”, well deserved!’ from outsick.
We could hear shouts of jubilation from neighbours watching as Priyanka Chopra, the outgoing queen, placed the shiny crown on the head of Agbani Darego, the new queen. Amidst flying confetti and a sonorous musical orchestra, the newly-crowned queen took a strut around various wings of the stage, grinning from ear to ear and waving to the cheering audience.
Just then, something strange happened to me. For a second, I thought Agbani looked like me. I was black, with a long neck and an oval face like hers. Tears welled up in my eyes. Soon, they streamed down my face. I could feel the glory and the honour; I wanted people to shout and clap for me like that. I wanted to be a beauty queen. I wanted to be Agbani Darego!
I smiled, cleaned my eyes, and told myself I would be a queen. I didn’t know how it would happen, but I became a dreamer that night. All I could think of was being on the stage, smiling and waving, answering questions and people clapping. A vision had been birthed in me, one that would take a few years to manifest. As I went to bed that night, the note of a melody from Pinocchio, the cartoon series, was all that filled my head. “When you wish upon a star, it makes no difference who you are; anything your heart desires will come to you…”
Excerpt from my book “Winning Without Compromise”.
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