Actress and entrepreneur Fella Makafui has revealed she once served a family in Accra as a maid to survive as a migrant from her home region.

She said she originally travelled to the Greater Accra region from the Volta region dreaming to enter the movie industry.

“Most of my childhood life was in the Volta,” however, “I finished school and came to Accra,” she told B Ice on Agyenkwa FM, Kumasi, adding, initially, life was tough for her in the big city.

According to Ms Makafui, she returned three times to the Volta region before permanently living in Accra. She revealed two of the occasions that took her back to her mother in her home region.

One was when “one day, all of a sudden,” her senior high school mate and friend evicted her from her home.

“I went back to the Volta region and when I returned, I took up a maid’s job,” she revealed.

“I did that, I think, for almost a year,” she added. “I had no choice then. I was working with a Lebanese family.”

She said she used to do that job with a friend of hers, “and afterwards, I became very ill and so my uncles came to take me back to the Volta”.

“When I returned, I started a thrift (fos) business. I was using the hall, where I lived, as a boutique. So from time to time, I’d rise early and go to Accra [to get stuff to sell].

“On my Facebook you can see some old posts of me posting clothing. They were in my hall, and my friends would come over and buy stuff,” she narrated.

Fella asserted she has “always been very business-minded”.

The social media influencer said she learned this from her mother who had shops, “and would go to the north to buy things in bulk. I always sold for my mom, when I was a child. So the business-mindedness is from my childhood days”.

Looking back on her days as a maid, she initially said she had no “bad experiences – I think they are life lessons”.

B Ice pressed, however, and although she insisted on seeing everything as lessons, she eventually admitted to enduring “horrible experiences” as a maid.

“My boss was very calm but his wife wasn’t. It wasn’t insecurity. There were times I would come to work and mop the floor but she would come pour water on the ground and have me mop again. There was a washing machine but she wanted me to use my hands to do the laundry. I was restricted from drinking water from the fridge, making me turn to the tap rather. But I see it all as part of life. It’s all made me who I am today,” the occasional singer said.

Fella Makafui said how she was treated taught her empathy, “and so I can’t treat another person the same because I know how frustrating it was for me at that moment”.

Meanwhile, “the third time I went back, I told my mom I wouldn’t be returning from Accra anymore,” the Omo Da hitmaker said.