Idowu Philips, the well-known actress also known as Mama Rainbow, has gone down memory lane, recalling how late Hubert Ogunde encouraged her to leave nursing and pursue a career in theatre.
Mama Rainbow balanced her nursing job at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba and the General Hospital in Lagos with acting for the Osumare Theatre Group.
The 83-year-old actress, while speaking recently with Feels Right News TV, said Ogunde gave her this advice after he watched a performance of the dance drama ‘Rabiatu,’ which she and her late husband produced.
“Baba Ogunde and three of his wives came there,” Mama Rainbow recalled.
“He said, ‘Is it not Idowu that did Rabiatu? You said you don’t want to leave nursing. Go and leave nursing and be doing theatre. You know how to do it.’ His wives greeted me and embraced me, and that was it.”
She explained that Ogunde’s advice persuaded her to leave her nursing job in 1986, even though her patients asked her not to go.
Mama Rainbow also talked about how Ogunde supported her after her husband died. She mentioned that he questioned her choice to wear widow’s clothing when she visited him.
“I decided that I wanted to leave nursing work and wrote my resignation letter. All the patients I took care of said they couldn’t accept that Idowu was leaving,” she added.
“He called me one day and said, ‘Idowu, you just not come here with this cloth you’re wearing’; he told me to remove it and told people to tear it. It was his wife who gave me another cloth to wear. Since then, I stopped wearing the cloth.”