Despite being visually-impaired, 21-year-old Favour Rufus won Port Harcourt City Beauty Pageant in 2022, beating 17 other girls to the crown. She speaks to GODFREY GEORGE about her motivation and struggles
Despite being visually-impaired, 21-year-old Favour Rufus won Port Harcourt City Beauty Pageant in 2022, beating 17 other girls to the crown. She speaks toYou recently won the Port Harcourt City Beauty Pageantry. How does that feel for you as a visually-impaired person?
What motivated you to participate in the beauty pageantry or was it always your dream to be a beauty queen? When I think of my mum and all she had to go through, I tell myself that I wouldn’t give up. Waking up early to learn catwalk was not easy at all.No, I hadn’t. The contest was my first attempt at modelling and beauty pageantry. It was all new to me but I knew I had to make it. In fact, after the beauty pageantry, I had so many blisters and couldn’t feel my feet for some days but I knew it was worth it.I wasn’t born blind. It just happened unfortunately when I was six years old.
It was a terrible experience for me. I was only six. I felt bad. There were times I felt like I was a different child in the midst of other normal children. There were times that I’d go behind the class and sob. They didn’t understand why I was always singing and crying in class. It was a way of consoling myself.
After I left TLEC, I went to a regular secondary school in Port Harcourt, and I was the oldest in the class. I was the first ever blind girl in the school and I was the oldest in my class. I was 16 years old then. I didn’t want to go but my mum insisted, pointing to the fact that I would still meet sighted people in the real world. I managed to go but it was embarrassing. The kids there made fun of me, and taunted me. My proprietor was on my neck, making me feel so bad.
As for non-medical intervention, I can tell you for a fact that there is no church that we know that we have not both gone to in search of healing and miracle. I remember one time, one friend of my mum’s came and said there was a church where the pastor could see into the future and could heal people. We went there but nothing happened. I don’t want to begin to mention names of places we went in search of a miracle. We have been almost everywhere.
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