Ms. Malawi speaks on China experience

Susan Mtegha, Malawi’s representative at the just ended Miss World beauty pageant held in Mongolia-China, has defended her actions in which she shoved Miss New Zealand Collette Kelly Lochore.

Various media houses in China and New Zealand reported that the Malawi queen shoved Miss New Zealand during one of the activities at the competition.

In an interview this week, Mtegha accepted pushing Lochore but says it was not as bad as it was put in the media. She says she did that because the New Zealand queen was standing on her mark.

“I know a lot has been written and in a negative way but the fact is that Lochore was standing on my mark. What Malawians should know is that what happened was not serious or that we were fighting. It was not like that. We were all standing in line and each had a mark to stand on. I was just trying to make Malawi visible,” said Mtenga.

In a video which has gone viral on the Internet, Mtegha is seen elbowing Miss New Zealand and stood smiling like an innocent child on camera. The video has been dubbed the Pageant Push.

On collapsing

On her collapse at the airport in China, Mtegha said she has a clean bill of health.

“My health record is clean. I have never fainted or collapsed but the problem this time was that I was exhausted and tired. Usually, every queen is escorted by her manager for support but in my case, I was alone.

“I arrived at the airport in the morning hours and already tired because five days prior to my departure, we had a hectic period. I was standing waiting for my flight which was scheduled to leave at midnight. It was exhausting and with the fatigue from the event, I fainted,” she said.

Language barrier, flight rescheduling fee

The 24 year old said she struggled a lot particularly because of the language barrier. No one could understand her.

But, this was not the end of the tragedies on her trip. She said her efforts to reschedule her flight the following day hit a snag as South African Airways (SAA) was demanding a rescheduling fee amounting to K115 000. Her office back home had nothing in its coffers and it had to take the efforts of her sister and father to pen SAA through the Malawi Embassy to allow the queen to travel back without any charges.

Mtegha pens her poor performance on lack of thorough preparations.

Miss China Wenxia Yu is the current Miss World.