She was in a virtually empty bus, but the man ignored the other empty seats and sat next to her.

“‘You’re probably wondering why I picked you to sit down next to’”, Mia recalled the man saying.

She responded: ‘Well actually yes, it crossed my mind’.

“He said: ‘I stepped into this bus and I saw an aura about you and I want to let you know that anything you do, you will succeed. He said ‘What’s your name’. I said ‘Mia’. He said ‘Mia?’ Your name means luck, luck and money. You re going to be a famous woman one day’. And that man gave me so much fuel for my life. It’s not funny. These things freak me out”, she related.

It must have been that same aura that the judges observed two Saturdays ago when they declared the 22-year-old winner of the Miss Guyana/Universe Pageant at the National Cultural Centre.

Said one judge, Miss Universe 1998, Wendy Fitzwilliam: “The young woman has presence. When she stepped on stage, everyone else disappeared. She has presence.”

Mia, a motor racing promoter, was crowned by Miss Universe 1999, Mpule Kwelagobe.

For Mia, wearing the Miss Guyana/Universe crown - something she does proudly - is like something she has been waiting for all her life.

“I used to be looking at Miss Universe pageants and glow and say to myself ‘one of theses days, one of these days’”, she told the Chronicle in an interview last Wednesday at the Miss Guyana/Universe Secretariat on Brickdam, Georgetown.

“When I make up my mind to do something, I do it”, she added.

Mia now thinks of herself as an Ambassador for Guyana.

Her father, local motor racing great Ray Rahaman, she said is a very critical man, so when he told her she should be an Ambassador for Guyana, tears came easily.

“I have accomplished something big here,” she said.

On Tuesday, Mia leaves for Washington DC, where she will undergo intense training for the Miss Guyana/Universe Pageant, billed for Puerto Rico on May 29.

“I’m looking forward to this. I’m just excited. It will be fun. I will meet interested persons and I will get to promote Guyana. So what if I don’t get into the top ten, I’m going to bring people here. Tourism has to boom, man. All my school friends tell me they’re going to come, but they’re just broke,” she said.

‘I was so composed’

The night Mia, competed for the title and crown of Miss Guyana/Universe, she said she shocked herself.

“I was so composed”, she reflected.

She found it relatively comfortable to model her swimwear. It was quite a different experience from the occasion, weeks ago, when the 20 delegates went to the Arrow Point Resort.

“I was afraid of going because I knew I would have to put on a swimsuit. I just did not show up. I was so embarrassed”, Mia confessed.

Later on, she knew that she couldn’t keep hiding her body if she really wanted to do it.

She developed so much confidence that at the Splashmins Fun Park for the official swimsuit competition, she had no difficulty strutting her stuff.

“I think I handled it so well. I think I gave a lot of girls encouragement. You don’t have to be skinny to do this,” she said.

Three days later, the other hard segment of the competition for Mia was the intelligence session held live on GTV 11.

Mia said she thought long and hard of the possible questions that would be asked.

In the line of heroes, she said she knew that she would have not gone wrong with Malcolm X, or Mahatma Gandhi, or if they wanted a woman, Lady Di.

But a ‘national’ hero was someone she did not think of.

Then, the name Walter Rodney popped up, and she just looked at interviewer, Walter Green, and said “Walter Rodney”. She then essentially explained that he was a hero because he did not recognise division of the ethnic groups, and that if we were to think of ourselves as Guyanese, that is the way the country would move forward.

She placed second in that aspect of the competition.

On the night of the Pageant, Mia outshone the other 19 delegates, and the judges saw in her what they were looking for.

She radiated throughout the competition, and even though there was a problem with her gown backstage, she was not cowed.

Other than being voted Miss Congeniality by her fellow delegates, she was adjudged the contestant with the best smile.

Her biggest competition, she said, came from crowd favourite, Juanita Collins, who was adjudged second runner up.

When it came down to the final question, Mia said it was the simplest question in the world for her. No wonder she scored the most points!

Asked if Guyana were to receive US$ 100 million, what the funds should be used for, Mia said the money should be plugged into tourism, and she included in her answer completing the Guyana/Brazil road and building an international airport.

Mia knew how important developing the tourism industry is for Guyana.

“We’re sitting on a gold mine,” she said, adding, “I have seen Guyana. I’ve seen my country. You cannot promote something if you haven’t seen it and felt it.”

She remembers vividly opening her eyes to the Kanuku Mountain range while spending time at Dadanawa Ranch and realising how beautiful Guyana is.

Mia epitomises everything we were looking for
Being a participant of Miss Guyana/Universe and winning has not been a totally rewarding experience for Mia. While she was out of the limelight, no one talked about her. Now, everyone does, and the negative comments might have been overwhelming to another queen, but not Mia.

When the judges that included Ms. Kwelagobe, Ms. Fitzwilliam and Miss U.S.A. 2001 First runner-up, Liane Angus, gave Mia the crown, a section of crowd protested.

Ms Kwelagobe stood in amazement on the stage.

Shocked, she turned to Ms. Fitzwilliam and said: “They’re booing her!”

Asked for her comments afterwards, Ms. Kwelagobe said: “Pageants will always be controversial because they are very opinionated. Our decision is final and we chose who was best.

“It wasn’t that we were looking for just intelligence. She had to have the beauty that we knew would work at Miss Universe. Miss Universe still wants their delegates to be beautiful. And that’s one of the things we had to look for, and Mia epitomises everything we were looking for. She had the smile, she had the confidence, and she had the beauty”, Ms Kwelagobe said.

Asked why she thought the crown belonged to Mia, Miss Fitzwilliam answered “why not?”

She noted that a queen “must not be able only to answer a final question. She must prove herself throughout the competition process. And Mia has certainly done that”.

Indeed, Pageants are controversial.
Lena Paparrigopoulou, a 20-year-old top Grecian model was selected to represent her native Greece at Miss Universe this year.

A Major in Religion at the University of Athens, she was involved in the controversy when the Greek Church condemned her participation in the beauty contest. Papers gave some importance to this situation.

“Jesus Christ does not accept sinful women!” headlines screamed one Internet magazine.

Mia is well aware of the wild rumours about her. She is openly told and sometimes taunted on the streets about her weight. Even Mia is frank about what people tell her.

Mia remembers one woman say to a man on a Georgetown Street as she passed their way: “If Olive Gopaul look like duh, and she ain’t get in the top ten, they gon tell she she can come in the competition?”

Just the day after she was crowned, Mia went to cricket at Bourda.

“A man was like shouting, ‘move out the way’. I blew a big kiss at him and shouted ‘I love you’”, Mia said, laughing in the process.

She enjoys it when people are negative and she towers above them and proves them wrong.

One of the first criticisms hurled her way is that she is overweight. At 5’10” tall, Mia is about eight pounds overweight.

“I’m not fat. None of those girls are sticks,” she said of other beauty pageant winners.

Mia blames putting on weight on the excellent Guyanese food.

“I love my Guyanese food - the curry, cook up rice… there is no food like Guyanese food. Full stop,” Mia said.

Two months before the Pageant, Mia started working her weight down at the gym and just has to work a little bit more to get where she has to.

‘I have learnt from my mistakes’
Rumours about her lifestyle and comments that she is not a good role model, abound.

Mia admits that she possessed less than desirable qualities, but that’s now behind her.

“I know my mistakes and I’ve learnt from them and that is what makes me an excellent role model. Because I’m able to share experiences with people and tell them what went wrong and use it to move forward and not to do the same thing again. You don’t make the same mistake twice. That’s stupidity and I’m not a stupid person,” she said.

While Mia looks forward to Miss Universe, she might just be doing so without the support of every Guyanese, but that doesn’t bother her. She said she has heard the nastiest things and is begging for people to “give me a break”.

“I would love my entire country to be glued to the TV and cheering me on and I’m feeling the positive energy, rather than feeling some people saying ‘watch she nuh, me ain’t know what they send she up fuh,’” Mia said.

Mia attended St. Margaret’s Primary School and opted to go to Bishops’ High School rather than President’s College.

She wrote the CXC Exams, passing with Grades II and III. She was livid about getting a II in Maths, as she is a “Maths person”.

After school, she started working at Cara Lodge in front-desk management and then moved on to the kitchen. She was supposed to move on to the restaurant, bar and housekeeping, but she didn’t.

Mia then took up tour guiding with Whitewater Tours, and, as a result, is very knowledgeable about Essequibo.

She also taught Information Technology at Mae’s Under 12 School and later left to pursue a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management at Johnson and Wales University in Miami, U.S.A.

She dropped out three months short of her degree, but can still go back to complete her studies.

“And the reason for me leaving was not because I was kicked out of school”, she stressed, as this was another rumour. Boredom kicked in, she said and her grades fell almost flat.

“It was because it was just lectures. You have to show me and I will learn. I will (learn) so fast and I will never forget. But if you read out to me (it) gets monotonous and (I) lose my focus. And so I told my parents I didn’t want to waste anymore of their money”, she said.

But it was only three months more for the degree!

“I know. But my grades went. And I saw this drop, and said if I continue its going to go low and I’m not going to graduate, and I’m going to have to start all over,” she explained.

Mia then came back to Guyana, worked a bit at the front desk at Le Meridien Pegasus and then moved to Canada with her mom.

There, she worked at The Guild Inn doing front-desk management.

She also went to school, doing two courses in Calculus and Advanced English.

She also learnt jazz dancing and modern Hindi film dance with the famed chorographer who put together the spicy moves of the dances in the hit Indian movie Dil To Pagal Hai.

Then Mia decided to come back home and stay for good. She had decided that she would not work for anyone, but wanted her business.

When she told her father she didn’t want to go back to Canada, he asked her what she would do, as he joked he wasn’t going to take care of her.

He jokingly asked her if she wanted to go dredging with him “in the bush”. She said yes.

Mia decided that she was going to go into event planning, but “nobody was bringing anything”.

Grass track was dormant in Guyana at the time, but the dirt bikes were all over the place. So Mia decided that she was going to become a motor sports promoter and this she has done successfully.

She drives the motor cars, but does not ride the bikes!

When Mia wears a strapless top, one would notice a tattooed butterfly behind her right arm.

She said she would not take it off ever, as it is a symbol in memory of her best friend who died when she was sixteen.

“There is something that is called make up that’s been covering it all the time and that’s how its always going to be,” Mia asserted.

Mia is looking past the negative comments.

“I’m shooting for the stars, forget the moon,” she said as she looks to Miss Universe.

“You have to be positive. I can’t go over there and say I’m going to try, I have to say I’m going to do it. If I don’t win, that’s my fault”, she said.

“I love who I am, I’m comfortable with me. It’s my life and I have to be happy,” Mia said frankly.