Sister’s death, extreme hardship caused my drastic weight loss – Oteele tells harrowing story

From Fat Joe to Oteele, the Kumawood actor has been nicknamed based on how obese he is. He reckons it is hereditary and people get amazed that despite being plus-size, his blood pressure is “perfect”.

He boasts of keeping fit through regular training and healthy meal and further touts he has never been sick. He just couldn’t be bothered about his stature.

Evidently, the actor has now lost weight.

“The lockdown caused it,” he said in an interview with Delay, stressing that life became tough because he was not financially stable – a situation that got him worried.

As attributed to Claudius in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions’ - another tragedy hit him with a bang. His sister kicked the bucket.

“She died on 2nd March. She was sick. We spent so much on her hoping she'd recover but unfortunately she died. We were told she died of diabetes,” Oteele recalled in local dialect Twi.

“I was the one paying for the expenses because our parents had divorced. He was a soldier. When they divorced, our mother went to her hometown and our father stayed at Abuakwa. We stayed with him. He died later.

“We [the children] were the only people left in the house he built. I’m the only one who, so to speak, is famous so I’m called to lead the path whenever the need arises. The burden and the pressure it came with was unbearable. That’s how I lost weight.”

Born Hen Yao Mawunyo, Oteele indicated in the interview that due to the ban on public gatherings which formed part of the government’s drastic measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus, he held a private burial for his sister, hence could not receive donations to help him offset the bills.