The Global Achievers Issue 11/2020 | Page 17

However, I peeked into everything everybody was doing and something changed in me. We had a story-telling program for children. It was a recording that took place on Saturdays and the children were there one Saturday. All the other members of the crew were there except the presenter. We were not going to tell the parents to take their children back home as a result of that. So somebody placed a call across to the control production services. They asked for the names of all the members of the crew that were there and I was subsequently instructed to go ahead and present.

Remember, I was just a floor manager then. Though I had led a choral group to the studio on a couple of occasions while I was in school, I didn’t know what inspired the controller to ask me to present. I had butterflies. But remember, I had a grandmother who used to tell us stories, moonlight stories. I went back into my closet and tried to remember one of her stories. People went into the costume room and brought me an Agbada (a traditional wear) so I could look a bit aged. I got in front of the camera. I decided something had to be unique about what I was about to do, as much as I was jittering. Then I remembered a character in the Village Headmaster series: the chief who always had his hands hidden under the Agbada − he never brought out his hands. Usually, when you are wearing Agbada you want to throw it over your shoulder and your hand will show. I decided I was going to copy what he did. So that was what I did, and the children were not sure whether their storyteller had hands or not. It created a comic effect. I told the story;