Emerald Obahiaghon in The Mind’s Eye

Emerald Obahiaghon, 17, is very good at four attention-demanding creative endeavours. She is a writer, singer, actor and TV presenter.

Recently, she released her first book, The Mind’s Eye and her single titled, Heaven Hears My Prayers.
  
The teenager, who is an intern with Rave TV, said jokingly, “it’s just a single, not an album. I coincidently ran into a music producer at my place of work and we decided to do a song together.”

The mass communication student of Institute Superieur de Management Adonai (ISM), Cotonou, Benin Republic, said singing and writing for her started when she was six years old. “I used to buy poetry books and read stories like the ones seen on Boomerang and Disney. I was just being a child then. I remember my first script was about the town that was coloured purple, everybody there was also purple, they wore purple clothes and ate purple food. That was basically me being a six year old.”
  
She said, “it’s a children’s book, and I’m not into that genre now.”

Emerald added, “I’ve grown older and my thought much deeper.”

She said it took her about two years to write the book. “I only wrote when inspiration came, I didn’t write for like three or six hours at a stretch; I usually write when inspiration comes, and when it goes, I drop. Originally, my intention wasn’t to write a book, I just wrote poems to express my feelings on issues. It got to a time I decided to increase, then I showed my mom and she encouraged me to keep writing and putting the poems together.

“I have 29 poems in the book. It was when I reached that number that my mom told me we could actually turn what I have done to a book. So far, it’s been a success story.”
 
According to the young writer, “all the poems are basically what goes on in my head, it’s me proffering solutions to societal problems.”