Florence Ibiyemi 'Yemi' Fawaz
So Unforgettable
Over twenty years ago, I was searching for a place on Adelabu Street in Surulere on the mainland of Lagos, Africa's largest megacity when I met the most beautiful model from Nigeria, Yemi Fawaz in her residence and restaurant, Double 4. She was the
first Nigerian international supermodel with a career from the 1970s to the 1990s. One of the pioneers of professional modelling in Nigeria. She was also a fashion designer, beauty promoter/consultant, actress, trade show organiser, chef, restaurateur, and deacon.
We became friends. I was attracted by her beauty and she was attracted by my honesty which she said was a rarity among majority of Nigerians. We became closer friends and she wanted me to join her in the management of her restaurant. But I couldn't do so, because I was a vegetarian who would not eat or sell meat to anyone. She thought she could change my mind.
She did for me what nobody ever did when she hosted my only solo salon art exhibition that I did not prepare for. She cooked and served all our invited guests, but when she served me, I openly rejected the food of rice with stew and beef.
"You know I don't eat meat. So, why did you give me a nonvegeterian food?"
She apologized. But she was not happy about it. We became closer. But my vegetarian life and refusal to run the restaurant with her made us to part ways before I left Lagos for Bonny Island on Rivers State in 2004. She had relocated to the United States of America before I left Lagos. She was still in America when I returned to Lagos in 2008. She returned later before she succumbed to colon cancer and passed on to eternal glory on February 20, 2019 at the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
I can never forget Yemi Fawaz.
"Unforgettable
In every way
And forever more
That's how you'll stay."
- Nat "King" Cole.
- By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
March 9, 2022.
