Secretary Peggielene Bartels Becomes African King
Secretary Peggielene Bartels was a secretary in Washington, D.C., when she received a phone call from Africa. Her cousin on the other end told her she had inherited the throne of the African fishing village of Otuam.
A persistent ringing phone in the dead of the night in August woke Peggielene Bartels, after which the 55-year-old administrative assistant living in a one-bedroom apartment found out she was much more.
Bartels’s cousin in Otuam, on the coast of Ghana, was excited and humble as he congratulated her on being the new king. According to CNN, Bartels recalls answering about the same as anyone else:
“I said, ‘listen, it’s 4 o’clock in the morning in the U.S., I am very tired, let me sleep.’ I thought he was trying to really play games with me.”
This was no game, however, as the previous king of Otuam, Bartels’s uncle, had just died. The village elders had remembered Peggielene Bartels from her visits with her mother, and anointed her as their new ruler.
Bartels then accepted it and took it as her calling, becoming the first female king of Otuam, reigning over approximately 7,000 people.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, other news striking Africa was a hunt by police to capture thousands of escaped crocodiles. Hopefully none of the crocodiles found their way to Otuam.
According to the Daily Mail, Bartels, in an interview, said:
“It never ever occurred to me [that I’d be Otuam’s king]. … I realized that on this earth, we all have a calling. We have to be ready to accept it because helping my people has really helped me a lot to know that I can really touch their lives.”
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Zimbabwe has less three hundred dollars in its bank account. Perhaps Bartels can help Otuam to be more prosperous than that.
What would you do if you were a secretary and were told you were now the king of an African village?
King? Women are queens, aren’t they? O_o The American secretary who became king: A woman’s journey to royalty cnn.com/2013/01/31/wor…
— Tom Flowers (@TomFlowers) February 2, 2013
