The Ghanaian Journal

I managed to pass through the press conference organised at the Golden Tulip in Accra last Thursday to give an opportunity to Mimi to say to the media what her experience in the Big Brother Africa 3 house had been.

Before we close the chapter on this previously unknown twenty-something-year-old who has now become one of the most talked about Ghanaian women this year, let us look at some of the things she had to say at the Golden Tulip.

It turned out that it was just the opportunity Mimi, who had returned from South Africa the night before, needed to give a piece of her mind to all those who had conspired to see her off the show and away from the $100k prize money.

Ghana’s representative in the Big Brother house said she did not care about what people have been saying about her because they did not know her.

“I will not allow myself to be brought down by all the negative things that have been said about me,” she assured the media.

In spite of her grandstanding, however, there is one pain to Mimi that was worse than most others—it was her kissing experiment with Ricco because it caused her a relationship.

At the time of the press conference last week, her boyfriend was at loggerheads with her for having the confidence to kiss another man on international TV! A small price to pay for fame, it looks like.

She said she did not think kissing was so much of a problem but it never crossed her mind to go beyond that to do something more intimate with any of the house mates.

“I knew where I was coming from - Ghana! You don’t do that on TV and expect it to be accepted as normal.” Apparently, even kissing did not go down well with some people.

Also, there were two issues she said in the house that Mimi hoped would not be brought up by the press.

One was the fact that the President was younger than his wife (apparently to justify her relationship with 21-year-old Ricco) and the second being that she used to go out with one of the members of VIP who used to hit her.

She said those comments were not deliberate and that they were very embarrassing to her hence she did not want to talk about them much.

Mimi tried very hard to convince the apparently disbelieving, members of the media present that whatever she did in the Big Brother house was totally not how she is adding that they could check the truth or otherwise from those who knew her very well.

Mimi said she got to know when she got out of the house that some people saw her to be a gossip, a back stabber and that she dressed shabbily.

She said none of these could describe her in real life as she was not a gossip, did not back stab and really knew how to dress.

“Everything I did in the house was not me as it was the strategy I adopted but it looks like Africa did not understand me and so they voted me out………..whatever you saw in the house was not Mimi as I was only playing the game,” she said.

Mimi actually said that she thought Big Brother deliberately wanted her hair to look shabby to ensure that the public would hate her and the reason for which he refused to give her the things needed to make her hair look good although she kept asking for it.

According to Mimi, if for nothing at all, she was more convinced that the continent-wide reality show had brought out to the fore her sterling acting abilities and she would therefore not let the opportunity pass by her as she would go straight into acting.

That, effectively, is the end of her day job as the personal assistant to the CEO of an engineering firm, she confessed.

Asked about what she would do now that she has become a famous person, Mimi said she hoped to use it well to affect society.

She said the Big Brother experience had exposed her to the efforts being made to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and she hoped to use her experience to ensure that they were achieved.

Mimi thinks that that Ricco has a greater chance of winning this year’s Big Brother Africa as he knows how to play the game very well.

Meanwhile in the Big Brother Africa house, the excitement continues and there would be one more eviction this Sunday after the seeing off of Zambia’s Takondwa last Sunday.

He was nominated along with Ricco who once again was returned to the house.

This week, the housemates have nominated Morris (Uganda), Thami (South Africa) and Hazel (Malawi) and come Sunday one of them would be kicked out leaving five people to set their eyes on the $100,000 prize money.

By Francis Doku