A CONVERSATION WITH CORNELIA OPOKU GYEMFI

Welcome once again everyone. It’s time to have a chat with a phenomenal woman! Grab a cuppa, sit back and enjoy.

Ama Duncan (AD): Thank you so much for making time to sit with me, Nelia.

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Cornelia Opoku Gyemfi (COG): Thank you too for having me.

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AD: I want to start by asking about your name. I’ve always known you as Nelia. Please share with us the special reason for the truncation of your name.

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COG: My full name is Cornelia but my mum likes to give three syllables names(hehe) and growing up in a typical Ghanaian environment, people loved to shorten names which sometimes gave it different, appalling meanings and I didn’t like that. So when I was an undergraduate entering into final year, I stood for the SRC Women’s Commissioner (but I didn’t win, oops). After the elections were called and I hadn’t won, I still felt this burden within me to do what God had called me to do. I downloaded WordPress and sought some help from a friend who had been blogging for a while on how to go about it. As I began writing, the name that came to me was Nelia. I then went ahead to look up the meaning of Nelia since it was coined from Cornelia and Nelia actually means ‘horn’. It was a good spin off from my name and had a good meaning so I adopted it.

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AD: Ahhh. You know, I’ve been following you for a while and first off, I want to commend your consistency. I believe you’re serving your audience well. Speaking of audience, what is The Phenomenal Woman about and what inspired you to start it?

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COG: Backtracking to the SRC story, that was what inspired me to start. Though I had lost the elections, I still felt I could serve the school community in a way, with my talents and gifts still being useful in the school community and beyond. I started a blog called The Phenomenal Woman blog. My Mum is a Reverend Minister so I grew up in the front line of the church. One of the things I noticed growing up was that young women between high school and university, before they got into marriage, had a very awkward moment in our lives where the church didn’t really pay attention to our growth. It was more like you’re a child and then next you’re an adult but in between that space you don’t really know what you want to do with your life. I figured that is probably not what God wants for us as young Christian women. I believe God has a purpose for us whether we are married or single or teens or young adults whereby wherever we find ourselves, there is something that we can do that will serve humanity as well as please God. So that was the whole reason why I began and it later spun into a network.

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AD: Fantastic idea! I remember that season of my life, such a network would have been really useful to me. Please share with us some of your activities and programs.

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COG: For a while, about two and half years while I was back home in Ghana, we used to hold Breakfast Meetings or Brunch Meetings. However, I’m in Canada now and with COVID too, it’s been difficult to put that together but I’m looking forward to having those meetings again very soon. As of now, one of the things that we do constantly is hold Instagram live sessions where we talk about diverse, relevant situations and questions that bother us as young Christian women. I’m actually in the throes of dealing with the church's notion and perception about the sexuality of young Christian women among many other things that people don’t like to talk about but I believe it is important to talk about them. I also have my weekly, short videos that I post which I call Lightbulb moments. During the week, anything that strikes me, anything that I think about, nothing scripted, I just say what comes to me. And I also have my blog serving as a good resource too for young Christian women. I’m also looking to start a monthly bible character session where we will go in depth about biblical characters making relevance to this particular era and our personal lives.

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AD: That is so beautiful. I wish all your endeavors a success. Congratulations on your recent graduation from law school + your new book! First, let’s talk about the law school experience. I read some of your posts after graduation. Please share a brief of it and the key lessons it taught you.

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COG: Alright. So I had my undergraduate education in Ghana, I studied law. But I couldn’t go to the Ghana Law School at that time because my institution in Ghana had some issues that were unresolved so I couldn’t apply. I applied for a Masters in Law to a university in Canada and got admitted. As I started the program I submitted my provisional transcript without my Degree which said I had fully completed the program. But here is the testimony, they didn’t state on my admission letter that my admission was conditional, pending my certificate because if they did, I wouldn’t have been granted a visa. I arrived two weeks later when classes had begun and was already disoriented. And then my faculty sent me emails that they needed my full admission documents to close my admission process because it was still open. At that point I panicked and honestly didn’t know what to do. I tried stalling but they kept coming back at me every now and then. Then I finally came clean with my Dean that I didn’t have what they were asking for. At some point they suspected fraud and because some of my documents from my school weren’t tallying. I was staring at being...Click on the link to enjoy the full blog post https://www.amaduncan.com/a-conversation-with-cornelia-opoku-gyemfi/