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CHINA NICKI CUTS THEM SHORT

Sierra Leone’s first ever all-female reality show, “Big Sister Salone” has finally come to an end, with the entertaining Haja Mariama Kamara, popularly known as China Nicki, emerging as the winner. For 30 days, 12 ladies battled it out in the Big Sister House, staking their claim through competitions, presentations and by their interactions with other housemates, all while millions of viewers watched.

China Nicki awed the judges since her audition and went on to touch the hearts of all who watched her. Her story is one of humble beginnings: having lost both parents at an early age, she was forced to drop out of school and focus on learning sewing for survival. Her story resonated with many viewers and she captured the love of so many with her casual humour, frank attitude and bravery in being so honest about her situation in life.

A complaint of many viewers of the program is that many of the ladies of the house put on false attitudes and behaviors upon entering the house and being on camera, such as the way they walked, the amount of food they eat, how they ate the food, how they dressed, etc. Even their attempts at speaking English with American accents and inserting American slang into their vocabularies caused many observers to label them as “fake” and “pretending for the cameras”

China Nicki was hailed because since her entrance into the house she made it very clear she came from a poor background and never had much to brag about. She spoke Krio fluently and didn’t even bother to attempt English because she knew it wasn’t her strong suit. This caused admiration in the minds of many.

One of the key arguments against China Nicki was the dispute that if becoming winner of Big Sister, her inability to speak good English and her comedic nature would be a poor representation of Sierra Leone to the wider world. But the fact of the matter is, reality shows are not to create ambassadorial-like representatives of the country in which they participated the reality show in. Reality shows are entertaining social experiments to have on record the interactions of a group of strangers on a daily basis. The contestants are awarded for their time and enter the show knowing they will be rewarded for this. China Nicki did not enter the Big Sister House to become the face of Sierra Leone entertainment. In fact, a friend of hers saw the advertisement, registered her, paid her fee and has guided Nicki throughout her course to success. So to say China Nicki shouldn’t win because she is poor, less privileged and wouldn’t be able to represent Sierra Leone is misleading and plain wrong. That is the purpose of Miss Sierra Leone, not Big Sister.

Unable to hold back her emotion after such a tumultuous journey, China Nicki shed tears as she was announced the winner of “Big Sister Salone” and presented with the check worth Le10,000,000 and the grand prize of a new Suzuki compact car. She announced that she owes this to all her fans and her friend Ejatu Barrie who has always supported her. It was a long ride but we’ve finally come to an end, so a huge congratulations to China Nicki and Team Rasul. You made us proud.