Big Brother Africa 9, it is a wrap

Breathless is how we all felt as 63 days of Big Brother Hotshots descended upon us with 26 hopefuls showcasing their talents on the live stage before being thrust into Biggie’s strange world. Laveda and her sexy sax won her the first Head of House and with that a guaranteed extra week in the house. Each week it became more and more obvious to the housemates that winning Head of House gave them immunity and power. In a weird game of balance, the first two weeks had female HoHs. However, they may have held the power in the house, but the first six housemates to be evicted from the show were all female with Resa (Zambia), Mira (Mozambique), Esther (Uganda), Lillian (Nigeria), Sabina (Kenya) and Laveda (Tanzania), all being given their marching orders before Alusa (Kenya) became the first male to be evicted from show. Alusa’s eviction finally broke the unlucky female streak and the numbers were soon balanced again as Arthur (Rwanda), Luis (Namibia), Frankie (Rwanda) and Permithias (Namibia) kicked out of the house. The theme of this season was Hotshots and Biggie didn’t disappoint as this was a house filled with talented individuals, and Biggie’s weekly tasks were leveled at showcasing the talents of the housemates to their fullest degree. The housemates adopted a “learn as much as you can” policy as they took every opportunity to add to their already formidable array of talents. Sheillah discovered that she was a great actress, whereas sleepy Butterphly discovered what a great lap-dancer she had become as she gradually lost her inhibitions during her 48-hour punishment for involuntarily moving during the freeze task. Biggie stretched the talents of the housemates with ever increasingly difficult tasks and extravaganzas. Everything from circus performance to silent movies was covered as well as comedy, modern dance, stomp, colours of Africa, fashion and sculpture. Did we forget to mention twerking? The weekly extravaganza’s incorporated everything learned in the house during the week and the housemates would then put on a show for Africa on most Saturday nights. We were treated to amazing performances of Pantomime, Bollywood, Shakespeare, Nollywood, Stomp and Shadow Dance and they even had to do a “ONE Africa” music video. Biggie took every opportunity that he could to raise the social awareness of various crises that face Africa, none more so than the ONE Africa Campaign with guest speakers talking about the Ebola crisis in Africa, and the ONE Campaign performers did an amazing song on the finale show. Another new feature of Big Brother Africa was the StarMeter fan award where a weekly question would be asked and the housemate that was spoken about the most across all social media platforms would win a weekly prize. Tayo won two simultaneous awards, winning the moniker “sexiest housemate” and for having the “x-factor.” Macky2 and Sipe also won two awards each, Sipe for “craziest” and was also considered to “have what it takes” whereas Macky2 was named “funniest” and sneakiest” housemate with Samantha getting one award for being “laziest” housemate. It has been an amazing ride and it was always going to be a difficult task to choose the ultimate Hotshot. There were 26 deserving characters that crept into our hearts and stayed there, making each eviction almost like losing a family member. It all came down to that moment on stage when IK announced that the winner of Big Brother Africa and the ultimate Hotshot was Idris, who walked away with the USD300,000.

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Big Brother Africa 9, it is a wrap