(76# Ghana) King Peggielene Bartels: Why she kicks ass
“To be a king in an African village or some places like this, it’s not like European queens where everything is on a silver platter for them … I have to really work hard to help my people. I have to give myself to people to better their lives..”
- She is currently the King of Otuam, Ghana and one of only three female kings in Ghana. She has maintained her work in Ghana’s embassy in Washington, D.C. while making education affordable in Otuam, installing borehead wells to produce clean drinking water, enforcing incarceration laws to deal with domestic violence, providing the village with its first ambulance, replenishing the royal coffers by taxing Otuam’s fishing industry to improve life in the village, and appointing three women to her council.
- When she encountered corruption and the threat of embezzlement to the royal funds, she declared “I’m going to squeeze their balls so hard their eyes pop!”
- For 11 months out of the year she’s regular Peggy, secretary for the Ghanian Ambassador. She works, keeps in touch with her advisors via phone every night, saves her money and accumulates her vacation time into one month-long period- where she then takes off to Ghana to fulfill her duties in-person.
- When she discovered that male chauvinists wanted her to only be a figurehead, she said: “They were treating me like I am a second-class citizen because I am a woman. I said, ‘Hell no, you’re not going to do this to a woman!’”
- King Penny’s tale has been documented in a book written by her and author Eleanor Herman and is to be made into a film after Hollywood star Will Smith bought the rights to the book.
King Penny’s tale has been documented in a book written by her and author Eleanor Herman and is to be made into a film after Hollywood star Will Smith bought the rights to the book.
oh my god i am so ready and also so glad that will smith bought the rights
She rules!
(via geek-feminism)
