I AM NOT YVONNE NELSON

out to matter more to him than the person he had come to see. This august visitor, if I should call him so because of the retinue of security guards he moved with, derived his infl

suggesting that money is bad. And I’m not saying some of these things don’t happen in Ghana. But if it is 100 in Ghana and you think you’ve seen the peak, you are likely to encounter 10, 000 in Nigeria. Nigeria operates on a different level. When my career took me there, I had to work within it even if I couldn’t fit in. Opting out was no option. The movie industry in Nigeria is far bigger than that of Ghana, and no Ghanaian producer ever paid me anything close to what I earned in Nigeria. To keep my job and flow with the industry, I had to learn to appease my audience and hosts without losing myself and my values in the avalanche of demands that teemed my way. Nigerians understand hyping and would go to all lengths to invest in it. If there’s hype around you, they’ll come around. Money is the fuel that stokes the hype of people who have nothing much to offer. In such people, the followers do not look at the substance. If you have money but nothing up there, people will still worship you. As an actress in my prime, the quest for brand association made my work in Nigeria extra difficult. A budding actress once took my script and posed with me on set just to post on social media that she was shooting a movie with me, when, in fact, she was nowhere near the cast. I wondered whether her social media followers would not expect to see the movie. But in this make-believe industry, some people would do anything to court fame. There were people who held parties and were prepared to pay you to attend just to enhance their status or show their class. The array of celebrities that attended someone’s party showed who they were. Being present at someone’s birthday or some other celebratory event sometimes paid me more than acting in a movie in Ghana. What made life difficult was the pressure from my circle of friends, some of whom wanted to hang out with me at times I was too tired to party. I often worked deep into the night, and when I was burned out, some friends would want to hang out with me at nightclubs. Some of them would still be sleeping the following morning when I had to wash down and start shooting. I had to strike a difficult balance between my schedule and being able to live in such a way that I wouldn’t be seen as snobbish or unsociable. Such tagging came with its own consequences. Aside from the random friends, especially females who just needed company, my days in Nigeria exposed me to its powerful men in politics, chieftaincy and the church. They were men who thought because of their wealth and influence, they were entitled to you. They mostly used your friends and people in your circles as points of contact. Call such intermediaries pimps and you won’t be wrong. I had experienced some of these men in Ghana, but Nigeria is always a notch higher and sometimes scary. I encountered many of these powerful men in my acting days in Nigeria, but a few stood out. There is a very popular and powerful charismatic preacher in Nigeria who expressed interest in me. I cannot say how he knew I was in Nigeria at that time, but I suppose my actress friend who told me he wanted to meet me was perhaps feeding him with updates about me. She only said someone wanted to see me and when I went out to see who it was, I was greeted by this popular “man of God”. He was calm and everything about him showed that I should have known what he wanted and kotowed to his wishes. I didn’t give in. And he wasn’t aggressive. After a couple of failed attempts, he gave up and I never heard from him again until I started reading hordes of stories about allegations of sexual assault against him. Another time, an actress friend told me his uncle wanted to meet me. I told her I had a long day and wouldn’t close early, but she had all the patience in the world for me that day. She came and parked her Range Rover and waited until I finished shooting after 11 p.m. Nigeria was scary and driving that late at night was a risk, but she made it sound as though we were going for an important business gig, so I obliged. She picked me up and it was midnight when we got to the Eko Hotel, where the supposed uncle was. The said uncle of my friend was in the luxurious Signature Suite. She introduced him to me as a popular governor or senator of one of the states in Nigeria. She then went to the lounge of the suite and left me with him in the room. There was no chair in the room, something that seemed deliberate. I sat on the edge of the bed and the most awkward silence I can remember in my life ensued. He, perhaps, had the impression that I knew what to do or say, which I found ridiculous. That wasn’t all there was to the drama. There was a fourth person in the lounge. The politician went to speak briefly to him and came back to tell me the man was his doctor, and that I should give him my blood sample for an HIV test. He said it was just a prick and that everything would be done in a short time. I found it disrespectful and shocking. Even if I wanted to sleep with him, that alone was enough to put any normal woman off. If he was interested in knowing my HIV status, why did he think I would not be interested in his? I told him that was not the reason I came there and that I wasn’t going to do any test. I was calm but firm, though afraid. There were two men and two women in the suite, but the other woman was on the side of the two men, so I was alone. If things got out of hand, I was going to be on my own. I later found out that the man was not her uncle as she had claimed, but she knew why he wanted to see me. When he realised he wasn’t going to have his way, he muttered something to my friend to the effect that I was acting weird. Soon, we were on our way out of the hotel. For our “transportation” back home, he gave my friend some dirty Naira notes he had produced from the briefcase that lay on the bed in the room. It was 1 million Naira and my friend gave me half of it. When I later googled his name and saw his photographs and association with a number of female actors and celebrities, I wondered what happened before or after those photographs. Years later, my curiosity about the politician I had met in the hotel piqued when a Nigerian friend in Ghana told me he had gone to him for a contract but failed to secure it. In the discussion, he revealed that the politician belonged to a cult and had insisted that joining that cult was a prerequisite to doing business with my friend. My friend said he couldn’t join, so he cut all ties with him. I have since been thinking about whether the blood sample he wanted to take of me was actually for an HIV test or for something that had to do with his occult business. But that was not going to be my last encounter with powerful men in Nigeria. The one that turned out to be the scariest of them all was initiated here in Ghana and ended up in the palace of a powerful traditional ruler in Nigeria. I didn’t know the traditional ruler who wanted to see me, but the man who told me about him said he knew me and would be instrumental in supporting my Glaucoma Foundation. The foundation was dear to my heart because my grandmother had lost her sight before she passed. I had loved her dearly, and, growing up, I thought she had not been given enough care. When she had glaucoma and went to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, she didn’t get enough education, so she used the eyedrop for a month and stopped. When she was almost losing her sight and went back for a surgery, we later learnt there was gross negligence on the part of those who carried out the operation. Her condition became irreversible. When she passed, I was in senior high school and felt I hadn’t reciprocated the love she had shown me. It was one of the saddest days in my life. She was all I had as an extended family member. I felt my mother had not paid much attention to her eyesight. Later, my mother had a problem with her eyes and went to the hospital. When the specialists investigated our family history of glaucoma, they realised my mother and I had what they called high pressures in our eyes. Deep in my heart, the foundation was in the memory of the woman I dearly loved and I hoped that through it, many others would have their sights saved. When the man told me how the Nigerian traditional ruler was supportive of charities such as mine, I was happy to meet him and tell him what I wanted to do with the Yvonne Nelson Glaucoma Foundation. From Accra, we flew to Lagos and boarded another flight to the traditional ruler’s home state. The turbulence on that flight is the most violent I have ever experienced. At one point, I thought the worst was about to happen. At that point, I began to regret embarking on the trip. When we survived what appeared to me like a near crash, I hoped something extra-ordinarily useful would come out of that trip to offset the torture I had endured. It steeled me against any possible nonsense before we got to the palace. The palace was a magnificent castle. One had to go through several halls before coming face-to- face with the ruler. Wait here. Come here. Go there. These were the instructions I heard until I met the powerful ruler, who was not so powerful in physique. He was a frail old man who looked like someone who could not survive another five years. The inner court I was ushered in to meet him had a magnificent royal bed, where he beckoned me to join him. Whatever the intermediary had told me did not happen. The traditional ruler was not interested in my foundation. He was not interested in my career or anything I was doing. He didn’t even deem it necessary to strike up a conversation with me. It seemed, like the governor, this old man expected me to know why I was there. He expected me to go ahead and act on cue. I had prepared to resist anything untoward and his attitude fortified my resolve even more. When he asked me to join him on the bed, I wondered what he needed me there for. At his age, what was he up to? I didn’t move. And when he realised he had made a wrong choice, he dismissed me. He gave the man who took me there a wad of dollar notes, who then gave me a share of $5000 as compensation for travelling to see the king. I was so angry with him that we ceased to be friends upon my return from that trip. He organises an awards ceremony that is wellpatronised and I wonder whether pimping for powerful men is part of his job. If it is, then in my case, he got the wrong target. I used to respect him because of the kind of people who patronised his programmes. I had known him back in my university days because he was dating my friend. In the encounters with the powerful Nigerian men, one thing surprised me above all others. The intermediaries did not ever tell me the expectations at the other end. Somehow, they assumed that once a big and powerful man wanted to see you, you were old enough to know what they wanted and should submit to them. It is one of the worst insults to womanhood and one can only imagine the rate of success that keeps them motivated to continue to explore. Genevieve Nnaji and the Rest There cannot be a movie industry without women. The Ghanaian and Nigerian movie industries have had women of different eras who defined filmmaking in different roles. I have plied my trade in these two countries and I know how instrumental women are to the survival of the movie industry. I also had a brief taste of the movie industry in Cote d’Ivoire. The Ivorian industry was much smaller than those of Ghana and Nigeria, and the language barrier cuts the Francophone movies almost completely from the Anglophone countries in West Africa. In my prime, however, I was privileged to attract interest from film producers in Ghana’s western neighbour. In Cote d’Ivoire, it was difficult for me because I do not speak French. When I was cast in French movies, the other characters spoke French while I spoke English. Later, my lines were voiced over so that the entire movie came out in French. That was a short spell, and I don’t have as many tales about women in the Ivorian movie industry as I do about Ghana and Nigeria. The movie industry is full of preys and predators. I have already spoken about how men who wield cash and influence tend to decide who rises to fame and who fails. As I progressed, however, I realised women in the industry were not only vulnerable prey in the hands of perverse men. Some were actually predators who terrorised mostly their fellow women, young women who looked up to them. I saw a bit of that in Ghana, but my worst experience was in Nigeria. Princess Tyra had opened doors, windows and chimneys for me, and Nigeria came knocking very early in that career. I cannot say enough how Nigeria’s Nollywood was the mainstay of many actors from Ghana. It came with fame and exposure to a much bigger audience than Ghana, but the money was the real deal. I remember at a point, some Ghanaian actors moved to settle in Nigeria as roles upon roles beckoned them. The cash trapped them. I didn’t want to be in their faces 24/7, so I made it a point never to relocate to Nigeria. I would go and work there and return. My decision was partly because I found Nigeria too hot for me. The cultural shock was something I couldn’t deal with and the expectations of me were more than I could ever offer. My initial Nollywood experience was heartwarming. I was privileged to be cast in the same movie with Genevieve Nnaji and Chidi Mokeme. I call it a privilege because they were already heavyweights in the industry. They knew their craft. They had the name and fame everyone craved in the industry. If you were a woman entering the movie industry in those days in Ghana or Nigeria, you could not fail to notice Genevieve and yearn to earn a bit of what she had made for herself. Surprisingly, however, Genevieve Nnaji turned out to be one of the exceptional women I have worked with or known in the movie industry. Her fame did not get into her head. She did not see herself up there and expect the rest of us minions to suck up to her. She was kind and considerate. She treated new entrants like me with the respect and dignity one would accord colleagues. She made me feel at home the same way Jackie Appiah made me feel when I began here in Ghana. Chidi was equally nice. He even hosted Kofi Adjorlolo and me in his house when we were in Nigeria. Apart from Genevieve and a handful of actors, however, I do not have a very good account of the females in the industry. Most of them are predators. They make the lives of their colleagues miserable. Their superiority complex is obscene and they miss no opportunity to make others feel insignificant. In Nollywood, for instance, there was an actress who was always weeping in movies. If you knew her only in movies, you would develop a soft spot for her meekness. In real life, however, she was a lioness. She would verbally abuse whoever crossed her path. She did not mind slapping her personal assistant or literally spitting on her. They found such behaviour as a normal part of the job. They commanded their reverence and whoever did not conform had to suffer their wrath. I consider Nigerian producers and directors generally more efficient than their Ghanaian counterparts. They are able to make good use of their time and resources and get the best out of the cast. What often affected the smooth flow of proceedings were