Miss Malaika: Patricia prepares to hand over

A new queen is to be crowned tonight

Ten gals will be vying for the Miss Malaika crown this evening. And Miss Malaika 2005, Patricia Akuamoah, is looking forward to when she will hand over her crown to a new queen. She says she will work together with the new queen to continue her campaign on malaria prevention and treatment. She claims the responsibility that came with the crown has been so educative for her that she can’t just decide to wash her hands off it completely.

The 20-year-old nursing student is very hopeful that the new queen will broaden the campaign and extend it to places she could not reach due to clashes with her academic work.

Patricia says the Malaika experience has really transformed her life and helped her discover abilities she didn’t know she possessed. She says the intellectual ability displayed by this year’s delegates is indicative of how competitive this year’s pageant will be. She believes whoever goes home with the coveted crown this weekend will go be tremendous with the responsibility that comes with it.

Patricia last week returned from the Bahamas where she took part in the Miss Intercontinental beauty pageant. The pageant saw forty-five delegates converging in the Caribbean city of Nassau for a ten-day programme to compete for the coveted crown. After routine rehearsals, competitive activities, a tour of the Bahamas and the final event, Miss Slovak Republic emerged the winner.

Unlike other beauty pageants, Miss Intercontinental beauty pageant is more focused on physical credibility and getting delegates who could be groomed into super models, thus less attention is given to the assessment of contestants’ intellect, inherent talent and the ability to express themselves. Nonetheless, Miss Paticia Akuamoah believes that given enough time, she would have given a better account of herself. This not withstanding, she says it was an educative experience where she got to learn a lot -- including strategies to help future beauty queens perform a lot better in international pageants.

“Even though I didn’t place as expected, I believe I’ve learnt a lot about participating in international pageants.” She says. “I believe it’s not a wasted trip because I’ve learnt a lot and I hope that with the information I’ve gained, I’ll be able to groom the next queen to do better internationally. There’s so much we don’t know and so much we take for granted when we send our girls off to participate on the international stage. I feel this is my contribution; if not bringing the crown home at least I brought a strategy.” She believes she’s done Ghana proud by just participating in the pageant.

“To groom an international queen takes quite some time. My advice to the new queen as soon as she wins will be to go through some modeling techniques, take a couple of photo shoots to get a portfolio and to be conversant with working with the camera [one thing she believes worked for the eventual winner of Miss Intercontinental 2006], knowing how to position her body to look desirable or appealing to the camera.” Other areas she thinks any beauty queen with international dreams should work on are her facials, physical appearance and her ability to communicate effectively. To her, open mindedness and one’s ability to venture into unknown areas [adventure] does also come in handy.