You know I don’t judge people… not even Serwaa.

If you’ve been on Ghanaian social media lately, you’ve probably heard what Serwaa Amihere said or didn’t say. Mostly what she said. On 25 October, she spoke to young women at The Complete Ignite Woman session. She told them to think twice before buying fake designer bags to impress people. And, well, people had thoughts.

Me? I think she had a point. People spend way too much money trying to look like they have money. But somewhere between the fake Birkin and Akabenezer’s copper chains, I started to wonder what the young women in the room were supposed to take away from all of this.

So let’s get into the good, the bad and the ugly.

THE GOOD

Serwaa came with a solulu. I’ll give her that.

Nothing irks me more than a speaker who tells you what to stop doing and then leaves you to figure out what to do instead. Serwaa actually gave the women options. A bag from Zara or Aldo will do just fine. And if you want nice clothes on a budget, go to Kantamanto. She talked about going there with her sister around four in the morning, when the traders were opening fresh bales.

That was the part I liked. I could picture the two of them getting up before dawn to go and see what they could find. She’d been there, done that, and for a moment you could hear her talking to the women in the room. There’s something reassuring about hearing someone say, essentially, I couldn’t afford the shoes I wear now either.

THE BAD

Then we got to the office and the fake Birkin. Serwaa said that if she saw someone walk in with one, she’d assume the person either didn’t know what she was carrying or wanted people to think it was real. And poor Akabenezer. The man was minding his business that Sunday morning and still caught a stray over his copper chains.

I laughed at the Akabenezer bit. But I kept thinking about the woman walking into that office. She’s already worried about whether she’ll be taken seriously, and now she has to worry about what her handbag is saying behind her back?

Everybody starts somewhere. That’s fucking life. Try a Macallan 18 after years of drinking 8PM. Try driving a G-Class when all you’ve ever known is a Hyundai Elantra. These young women are just getting started. Surely there’s room to talk about how to build a career, earn your own money and get comfortable in rooms where you’re still finding your feet. I’d have loved to hear more of that conversation. I’d also have loved to hear what the other panellists had to say. In my feed, it was Birkin, copper chains, repeat.

A word for the organisers. Give people a way to find the rest of the conversation when a clip takes off. Social media is full of hyenas. They’ll feed on you at your weakest. And here I am, happily typing away.

THE UGLY

It didn’t take long for people to stop talking about fake bags and start calling Serwaa herself fake. And yes, I’d look at Serwaa twice in a crowd. What does that tell you about whether her advice was any good? About as much as a handbag tells you about the woman carrying it.

I know next to nothing about Serwaa, but this is the third time she’s landed on my radar. The first time, she was in the middle of some other online controversy. The second time, I heard she’d become a lawyer. Belated congratulations, by the way. And now, this whole IGNITE brouhaha. So that’s my grand total of three encounters with Serwaa, all from a distance. And somehow, by the third one, everybody online seemed to know her well enough to decide whether she had any business giving these young women advice.

It made me think of Saul on the road to Damascus. Imagine being one of the early Christians and hearing that Saul, of all people, wanted to come and talk to you about Jesus. You’d have had questions. I would have had questions. And yet look who went on to spend his life preaching the very thing he’d once tried to stamp out.

So I’m willing to give Serwaa a little room to grow into The Complete Ignite Woman. And if she’s back on that stage, I hope she tells us more about the years between those four-in-the-morning trips to Kantamanto and the shoes she can afford now.

That’s the story I wanted to hear. The Amina Muaddis can wait.