SOMETHING inexplicable happens whenever a cameraman has 18-year-old Annice Manjet lined up in his sights. He just can’t seem to take his fingers off the release button!
Pageant photographer, Aubrey Crawford tried putting this unusual phenomenon into words. “She speaks to the camera,” was all he could manage.
Born and raised at Uitvlugt on the West Coast of Demerara for the better part of her life, young Annice has always been crazy about pageants. If only she could overcome her shyness.
Then along comes cousin, former Miss Guyana World, Odessa Phillips, suggesting that she enter the Miss Region Three pageant, billed for August 15.
First time lucky, she copped that title.
Can she do it a second time around?
She’d rather wait until she comes to that bridge before crossing it.
“The girls are all so beautiful,” she admits, but, she’s not afraid of a little competition. “It’s a stiff competition: Yes! But you just have to keep your composure and do your thing.”
Though currently pursuing a diploma in micro-computer studies, her heart is really set on becoming either a fashion designer or cosmetologist. “I have this craving for making people look good …I always like to see people looking good,” she said.
She’s already begun putting ideas on paper, never mind she is hopeless when it comes to Art. She’s much better at making up clothing, she says. Her tastes mostly run to the exotic. “I like short, really sexy pieces,” she said. She also has a thing about shoes; though not with the same zeal as Imelda Marcos!
A graduate of St Stanislaus College, she lists among her hobbies listening to music; particularly soul, which, she says, “brings out one’s inner feelings.” She also likes cooking and travelling, though the only country she’s ever gone to so far is neighbouring Suriname. “And I really enjoy sleeping; I like to sleep a lot.”
She hasn’t given much thought to her platform as yet, but she feels rather strongly about the alleviation of poverty. “…I think poverty is the main reason for most of the crime in Guyana,” she said. She also feels just as strongly about street children and child abuse.
This is Angelica Fredericks’ second go at the Miss Guyana Universe title.
Her first attempt was back in 2001; the year Mia Rahaman won it.
This time around, her motive can be said to be purely altruistic; if a bit self-indulgent.
“For one,” the Bartician beauty and reigning Miss Bartica Regatta said, “you meet a lot of new people. And I like meeting people. You also get to see different places of interest. And besides, I have this passion about promoting literacy in my community.”
It’s the same cause she championed at this year’s Miss Bartica Regatta, she said. “I would like my voice to be heard on a wider basis, so I came into the pageant to promote my platform. And that’s the only reason that I got involved….and for the fun of it and meeting new people.”
Agreed, the competition is somewhat stiffer this year, experience-wise, than her last outing, but she is equal to the challenge. “As you know,” she said, “we have a lot of queens; so it’s like the clash of the queens. It’s not that they are more beautiful; as everyone is beautiful in their own little way. It’s just that they’re a lot more experienced. It’s a challenge…and I like a challenge.”
A Home Economics teacher by calling, she wants to further her studies in this same field; to become a professional teacher. With Home Economics, the 22-year-old Piscean beauty said, one has a choice of being either a dietician or a nutritionist. Even an interior decorator. “I just want to be a teacher; to pass on my knowledge in the same way it was passed on to me.”
Which brings us back to her relentless war on illiteracy. “It’s the root of everything that is going wrong in my community. Literacy doesn’t only mean reading and writing. It also has to do with interpreting and reasoning in certain situations. And if you don’t know how to reason or interpret …when people say something to you, you may well misconstrue what is being said and react negatively.”
The eldest of four, she likes to sing and dance a lot. It’s a trait that runs in the family. She also likes corresponding and reading.
And, should you see Hector Stoute acting somewhat out of character on pageant night, know that he has every reason to.
She’s his grand-daughter.
When first she was approached about entering the Miss Jam-Zone pageant, her initial reaction was: “Me! Every and anybody! No way!”
Today, Elitha Stewart is singing a different tune.
“I would recommend entering the Miss Jam-Zone pageant to any young lady who is preparing for any one of the major pageants,” the 18-year-old Geminian says. “Reason being that the training is stiff; similar to the one we’re undergoing now. So, when you’re here, and you’re training, it’s like…. basically brushing you up.”
It’s also very challenging, even more so than Miss Guyana Universe because it targets a different kind of audience, and a wider one at that. “It’s everybody and anybody …it’s entertainment sector…and I mean, when you’re entertaining people, you entertain everybody. It was challenging in the sense that I was new to the stage. I was new to everything. I’m afraid of cameras, and there I was, putting myself in front of 6,000 people.”
It has always been a dream of hers to be an ambassador of Guyana’s, “moreso a beauty queen,” she said. Miss Jam-Zone, of which she is the reigning queen, was just a stepping stone to trying out for the Miss Guyana Universe title.
Why not Miss Guyana World?
“I was not brave enough,” she said. “And, to me, Miss Guyana World and Miss Guyana Universe are major. I’m not saying that Miss Jam-Zone is not. Just that it’s different.
A past pupil of North Georgetown Secondary, Elitha graduated in 2001 with eight subjects at the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations, following which she did the one-year course in Industrial and Social Studies at the Critchlow Labour College. Now she’s after a degree in History which she is pursuing at the University of Guyana. She aspires to become a Historian/History Professor.
Why History?
“It is my passion,” she says. “It drives me, so to speak. If you notice everyday life, there’s a history behind everything. There’s a history behind technology; there’s a history behind how we got here; there’s a history behind every aspect of life. People most times forget their history; they forget that it’s important in analysing their future or planning who you’re gonna be. They just see it as boring and not the thing to do. Me, I want to know everything; from the beginning; how we got here; where we’re going; who we were. I wanted to get down to the root of it all, so I decided that History is what it’s going to be.”
Her face lights up at the memory of her brief stint with Liana Cane Interiors, located at Plaisance on the lower East Coast where she lives, just outside the capital, Georgetown.
“It was fun,” she said, adding: “Actually, I always fancied myself as a short-skirt, office-job type. But then, I applied everywhere and wasn’t getting through. So I said to myself: Enough of this must-have-this-job-or-I-will-not-work nonsense. And, since the factory is right in Plaisance… and I live there… I decided: Might as well.”
Her hobbies are challenging herself, reading, hanging out with friends, playing crossword and shopping. She also enjoys watching mom, Lorna, cook while the two of them catch up on the latest gossip.
She’s chosen as her platform supporting your local industries. Her year at ‘Critchlow’, she said, opened her eyes to the importance of buying local to the economic development of one’s country and how naive and foreign-minded Guyanese consumers can be.
“For instance, you go to a local show; the local artistes they’re there; I mean, they’re talented; they’re in large numbers…and you have to pay $1,000 to watch them entertain you. And you look in the audience and you barely see 100 persons. But just say Byron Lee and the Dragonaires…pay $1800…and you look in the audience and you see like ….5,000 people.”
She’s currently studying world history, but for her Masters, she plans taking up Guyanese History, which she will be teaching to local kids at a later date. She is also looking later at going into business, preferably in the area of cosmetics.
Ideally what she has in mind, she says, “is a great quality of cosmetics for Black women in Guyana. Guyanese women don’t really wear make-up; I think every woman should go around fully made up; looking like a model; feeling like a model.”
If given the opportunity, she hopes that by 2005, “I will have my own business in Guyana, selling beauty products,” as a means of supporting herself while studying.
Wouldn’t it be nice to one day see a Guyanese make it big in Hollywood?
Well, this same thought must have crossed Verita George’s mind when she signed up for the Miss Guyana Universe contest, as she aspires to become not only a super-model, but an actress of note as well.
Said she: “My ultimate career goal is to become a model/actress. So I think this is my stepping stone to that. I would like to start out being a model…..and I’m hoping that this pageant will elevate me to universal stage whereby maybe I can be spotted by a talent scout.”
A professional model and tour promoter with Pakaraima Adventure Tours, a subsidiary of Red Water Tours, Verita was fortunate to have been schooled both here and in Suriname. She is therefore multilingual, in the sense that not only is she proficient in her native English, but Hollands, the official language of Suriname, and ‘taki-taki’, its lingua franca. She also knows enough Chinese to get by, as well as Portuguese.
Her hobbies reading, modelling, travelling and dancing. Her platform is breast cancer, a subject that is not only dear to her, but one which also awakens fond memories of her mother, who succumbed to the dreaded disease at the age of 42.
Verita, now 19, was seven at the time. She’d watch her suffer for two long years.