Rising model talks about her childhood

ayodele johnson

February 17, 2016 5:45 AM

The life of this young mother of two has changed, as she is now the face of some top corporate brands with no sign of this coming to an end anytime soon

The story of rising model, Jumoke Orisaguna has been an inspiration to categories of people with little means of income, especially every tall, model looking bread seller out there, hanging on the statement that someday luck might smile on them.

Jumoke is now the owner of a luxury apartment in Lagos with various endorsements from corporate organisations such as Payporte and more recently, Stanbic IBTC.

This has not been the case for her and her family.

The hardship associated with living in poverty is not alien to her as she narrates in an interview with Punch Newspaper.

READ: Bread seller turned model features in Stanbic IBTC ad

Speaking concerning her childhood, she said, “While the other girls would run around to play in the stream and engage in all sorts of games, I was either selling vegetables for my mother or helping my father on his farm because it was from these two areas that our daily bread came,”

“The opportunity for running around like the other girls wasn’t just there.”

She luckily made her way to stardom when she appeared by chance in a Tinie Tempah photo shoot being orchestrated by celebrity photographer, TY Bello.

“I only wanted to walk through the scene to take bread to my customers at the mechanic workshop around the place the shoot was taking place. I never had the intention of appearing in the photograph. It was while I made my way that the camera captured me,”

She reacted to the public gaze that followed her after the shoot by saying she was quite surprised by the way people looked at her the next day.

“I was afraid that morning because wherever I turned to, people looked at me unusually,”

“It was as if I was a wanted criminal that everybody was looking for. One guy stopped me in the process to tell me that some people were looking for me and that he saw me on the television and Facebook the previous night. I simply ignored him because I felt he was crazy. How could I have been on the television when I didn’t pose in front of any camera, so I thought. Throughout that day, people told me the same thing in all the places that I went.

“By the third day, as I entered one estate where I used to sell to some of my customers, an Hausa man ran after me immediately he saw me. He said his madam had been looking for me and that she wanted to help me. That was how he took me to his madam who happened to be TY Bello. Immediately she saw me, she welcomed me specially into her home and paid for all the bread in my tray. She told me it was the end of my hawking bread and that I was going to have a new life,” she said.

And truly the life of this young mother of two has changed, as she is now the face of some top corporate brands with no sign of this coming to an end anytime soon.

ayodele johnson