Big Brother Africa is finally here

The season 9 of Big Brother Africa (BBA) has seen it all even before it will begin.

Some countries could not send representatives due to visa issues. Some countries’ representatives were chosen in a foreign land to represent them.

Also, the house where they were going to stay caught fire and burned to the ground. The producers had to comb the world looking for an alternative place to host it. The show had to delay for one month.

Finally, we are at the point where the housemates will enter the Big Brother Africa house – you can call it makeshift house, if you will – and do what they can to win the USD300,000 available for which of them will emerge as winner after 91 days.

On Sunday October 5, 2014 Africa will be tuned to DStv as they wait the grand entry of housemates into the Big Brother Africa house to begin their journey of entertaining the people on live television from October 2014 to January 2015. The Big Brother Africa Hotshots is about to unfold before our very eyes!

According to my own crude calculations – using my fingers to count the number of days – this show should end circa January 5 2014. This means that this particular Big Brother Africa will be the first to show during the Christmas period, thanks to the one month delay.

Over the years, the producers kept the names of the housemates a top secret for the launch day. However, as you may already know, Endemol SA and MNet have broken that particular tradition by releasing the names of the housemates from the different countries ahead of the show on Sunday via the show’s official website.

There are two people representing Ghana and both of them were chosen through auditions held in South Africa as the final four nominees could not make it in time for the final test to be done in Johannesburg. You may have read about the two but let me share their bio as published in the BBA website here again

Twenty-five year-old M’am Bea lists her occupation as ‘Acting Trainee Manager/Fashion Designer’, and has a Diploma in Management Finance. Her favourite foods are yam and nkontomire stew, fufu and palm nut soup and jolof rice. M’am Bea likes music by Sarkodie, Mafikizolo, John Legend, Wizkid and D’Banj.

Inspired to enter Big Brother Hotshots by her talent and ‘the unity of all African countries coming together as one to learn and share’, M’am Bea also lists making it onto the show as her proudest achievement so far.

‘It will give me room to showcase my personality and influence young, gifted youth out there,’ she says.

She describes herself as a ‘driven, humble and respectful self-starter’, M’am Bea says that viewers can expect her ‘true self’, her ‘fashion sense, sense of humour, cooking skills, intelligence and wise words’ to shine through on screen. She says she’s ‘humbled and overwhelmed’, knowing that the continent’s eyes will be on her.

Her favourite place in Ghana is Aburi Gardens and she says the best thing about Africa is that ‘it expresses diversity through colours and we are not ashamed to exhibit that’.

Outside of her home country, her favourite place in the world is South Africa: ‘it offers so many opportunities and it offers young people the opportunity to study and become great people in the world’.

On his part, 29-year-old Accra born Kacey Moore is a married poet and songwriter, with a daughter. He enjoys banku and okro stew and says his favourite books are the Bible, the dictionary, and the thesaurus! Kacey Moore also likes the music of Usher and Lauryn Hill.

He entered Big Brother Hotshots as a business decision, seeking exposure to the rest of the world. Kacey Moore promises viewers ‘a real person with no fakeness’. If he wins the grand prize, he’ll buy houses for his wife and mother and set up a recording studio so he can record and release his own album under his own label.

Kacey Moore describes himself as a’ go-getter’, as well as ‘punctual, a leader, a creator and a voice’. His favourite quality is, punctuality. It is important to him in both himself and others.

As you already know, Ghana has not had the good fortune of winning at any of the previous eight editions of Big Brother Africa and we have seen different characters emerge as our representatives on that prestigious show.

The closest we came to winning the prize money at Big Brother Africa was last season when Elikem Kumordzie went to the very death of the show as one of the three remaining housemates. It was a close shave for the many Ghanaian viewers who had rallied strongly behind their compatriot.

Before Elikem it was Keitta Osei, before Keitta it was Alex Biney and before him was Kwaku T (the second housemate after Sammy B who had been our first representative) who came anywhere close to the prize money.

That aside we have seen some good representation and some very terrible ones at this pan-continental show. Heck, we have even set at least four records at the show: our housemate was evicted after one week, our housemate refused to go to the main audition over Brazilian wig, our housemate voluntarily asked to be taken out on health grounds and our housemate got kicked out for slapping a fellow housemate.

This means that M’am Bea and Kacey Moore have their work cut for them as housemates. Already folks back home have had cause to question how Ghanaian they are and on that basis how representative they will be considering they do not live in this country.

My unintelligent guess is that we will get to know all these and even more when the show starts from Sunday and they begin to interact with the housemates from the other countries. We will know if these two people are worth banking our hope on to deliver the goods this time round.

For me, the fact that they represent Ghana means everything. It means rallying behind them and supporting them to ensure they go far. They will have to know which strategies to adopt to play the game in order to go far in this very gruesome competition.

I have no doubt at all that their compatriots back home will be voting for them to stay when they come up for eviction, it behoves on them therefore to do what they can to appeal to the viewers in other countries to ensure their longevity in the game.

Big Brother Hotshots will run 24/7 on DStv channels 197 and 198, with live eviction shows as well as the best of the live daily and weekly highlights shown on Africa Magic Family, Africa Magic Showcase, Africa Magic World and Maisha Magic.

M’am Bea and Kacey, we’ve got your back, back home so Go Get Them-oney!

source:

ghanaweb.com