Posted by By Emmanuel Mayah on
The competition may be for $100,000 but there is another prize fiercely coveted by every girl in the house: the hottest girl in Big Brother Africa 3.
The competition may be for $100,000 but there is another prize fiercely coveted by every girl in the house: the hottest girl in Big Brother Africa 3. Viewers of BBA Season 1 would recall that though Cherise Makubale of Zambia may have emerged winner, the real bombshell was Abergail Plaatjes of South Africa, fondly called ‘Abby'. Wild, beautiful and bad, she was the object of every man's dream and the envy of every woman.
In Season 2, Nigeria's Ofunneka may have been the last girl standing; it was the Angolan girl Tatiana that stole the hearts of many. Now the race is on again. There are six girls in the house; each employing wits, naked intelligence, guile and exhibitionism to project herself. Their effects on viewers, just as on their male housemates, are as diverse as their sense of personal style. Sunday Sun spoke to six Nigerian male viewers to get their pick of the hottest girl of the reality show.
Latoya
Latoya is a bubbly 21-year-old secretary from Tanzania who has had her fair share of the topsy-turvy moments in the house. A lover of fun, she confesses that her fondest memory is the time she spent with her first love. Four weeks into the show, the house of BBA 3 is already burning with romance, courtesy of Latoya who has decided to do everything in a romantic manner. She started off keeping male housemates busy by initiating some cuddling here and there and having suggestive discussions with them. As early as their third night in the house, Latoya and Morris of Uganda were seen having a romantic moment in the garden away from the rest of the housemates.
And in the sleeping room, Latoya demanded for a good night kiss from Angola's Ricco who yielded to the demand. She had no qualms about the latter sleeping in her bed afterwards.
According to 29-year-old Kingsley Omosehin, a dance teacher, Latoya has the most exciting personality of all the girls in the house. 'I say so because everything about her is real. She is my most favourite housemate. She is so down to earth. Unlike Sheila, with Latoya, what you see is what you get. I'm surprised when people say she is controversial; that she set two men against each other. If she is an exhibitionist; if she is the first female housemate to go naked in the shower, that is because she is being herself.
I always say that nothing can be more real than a reality show. You can put up an act for hours, days and possibly a week. Any time longer than that, you soon begin to give yourself away. Except you are a well determined conman. That is why Sheila is having problem in the house. You can see she is just plastic; even her smiles are afterthoughts. But Latoya is not like that. She is so simple and frank that I doubt if she can be part of a conspiracy.
What I particularly like in Latoya is the fact that she is beautiful and intelligent. I like the smart and mature way she explained away Ricco, a self-confessed heartbreaker. Everybody felt that Latoya came cheap by easily admitting Ricco into her bed but she says the guy is only making her job easier. She has explained that she is not to blame if all a guy does is jostle to sit next to her or queue up to be her dance partner. For these and more, she is my dream girl and I would stop watching the day she is evicted.'
Tawana
For some male viewers, Tawana is seen as the Botswana bombshell. This 31-yer-old graduate of microbiologist already has a string of firsts to her credit. She was the first housemate, male or female, to enter the house. She was equally the first to be appointed Head of House. In picking Tawana as the hottest, 34-year-old sportswriter, Ken Onyia says:
'I particularly like her air of authority. If you recall, she was the first to enter the house and to all the others that came after her she said to them; welcome to my house. At every point in time you can see that she is in control. It takes a woman who is in control to wear a defiant low-cut for hairstyle. It takes a woman who is in control to be a microbiologist and same time a goat farmer. Tawana is my kind of girl. She is beautiful and she is curvy. And she is a true African woman. What more can a man ask for? She made my day when she began to take it all off in the shower.
Even the men are intimidated by her nudity. And the other girls know she has a strong character. Even the almighty and invisible Big Brother knows that Tawana is a tough nut. She blew a fuse with her outburst at Big Brother himself, saying that she'd been noticing that BB hated her because of her laidback hairstyle and the fact that she's 'black'. She had the courage to add that had she been 'flaunting a Beyonce-look-alike hairstyle ‘white' BB would be treating her with the respect she deserved. She even said that BB was acting like a f…king God.
Sheila
It did not take long in the house for one of the female housemates to describe Sheila as attention seeker with nasty attitude. Till today opinions have not changed about this 23-year-old lanky Kenyan, a former television reporter now pursuing a degree in International Relations. Sheila may have settled for the wrong career because so far she has been unable to prove that diplomacy is one of her strong points. Yes, she did confess early on that she hardly gets along with fellow girls and that she was something of a tomboy.
Her family admits that she is lazy and cannot be counted on for chores. Not surprisingly, Big Brother had to wield the big stick against Sheila one morning. He asked the chirpy Kenyan to do 10 minutes solo exercise for not participating in the morning training. She entered the Diary Room oblivious to the fact that Big Brother wasn't ready for chit-chat. She claimed she participated partially in the training, but this fell on deaf ears. Viewers can't understand why a lady just 23 smokes and drinks too much.
Whatever her shortcomings, Sheila has kept many male viewers glued to their television. One of them is Ephraim Ugbana, an undergraduate of the University of Lagos.
'Sheila is my favourite choice. My two brothers say same of her. I don't understand this talk about her being an attention seeker. I think she is intriguing and takes her time to reveal one aspect of her after another. If she has not yet revealed her body in the shower, it is not because she is not confident of her body. She has good statistics and the choice is absolutely hers to flaunt it or not and when. If she is nasty, I think it is because people don't understand her. They say she talks too much but she keeps the house alive. She just gives the others something to think about. I mean, she stated that she is bisexual and her strategy would be to sleep with all the women first then go for the dudes. How many girls can get away with that? This girl knows what she is doing. When she kissed Morris, I think she did so not wanting to be upstaged by Latoya.
Lucille, Mimi and Hazel
Not one of the Nigerian male viewers spoken to put Lucille, Mimi or Hazel in the hottest girls' bracket. None of these three is seen to possess the attributes that can make a man go crazy. However, Lucille was generally seen as possessing a latent beauty and an equally hidden power that could be deployed to topple any of the three top girls. Indeed, not a few viewers pointed at this 21-year-old fair-skinned Namibian as capable of emerging the ‘dark horse' in the final analysis. So far, a good number of male housemates, including Nigerian Uti, have tried all the tricks in the books to crawl into her bed. So far, projecting the image of a sex symbol appears not to be one of the goals of Lucille who promises her audience laughter and tears while keeping her eyes on a tip to Europe.
Mimi was variously described as a village girl who has gone to South Africa to embarrass her fellow Ghanaians. Someone advised that she takes to wrestling if only to put her muscles to good use. But given that she is not one of those penciled for eviction, the 27-year-old Personal Assistant, might have the last laugh. After all, she promised to cause confusion by being ‘partly myself and partly not'.
Hazel looks every inch a wedding planner. Though she has occasionally wiggled her waist in seductive dance steps, the fact that this 25-year-old Malawian was also not mentioned for eviction, has made some male viewers to query audience understanding of the voting process. As Kingsley puts it: 'how is it that the three most vivacious girls are mentioned in the eviction. Does somebody want to shut the show?'