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Anyiko Owoko Photo: Courtesy
My campus years at the University of Nairobi are a perfect testimony of a girl who has worked her way up.
I was infamously known as the girl who was always in braids. Not that I really loved my trademark but I was too broke to afford changing hairstyles like I do now. I just needed an affordable hairstyle and thanks to that, to-date the people who knew me from campus still refer to me as the girl in braids!
Lunch was a luxury. My best friend Willis Chimano (of Sauti Sol) would cross over to some dingy restaurant at KEMU towers and buy a packet of chips, which we would share as we ambitiously swore that we would never go back there after graduating. To-date I feel sad when I pass by but it reminds me of how far I have come. I can now afford a plate of decent food in a posh restaurant.
I was a very ambitious student. I really wanted to write for the school magazine, which was then known as the Journalist. Unfortunately, only ‘friends’ of the editor got the opportunity to be published.
My production lecturer would always demand that I get rid of my chunky bangles, warning that they would interfere with the quality of our recordings. This was a lifetime lesson as my current producer concurs with this rule. I cannot forget my favourite lecturer Edwin Nyutho who also happens to be one of my favourite actors in Kenya. He always encouraged me and promised to introduce me to TV; which he eventually did. He had so much faith in me!
My favourite nightclub was Mwenda’s at Utalii House. I loved sitting at the balcony, in fact my friends always knew where to find me without calling me on my cellphone. I was dating a guy who was a year ahead of me. Sadly, he was also dating my friend, who is now a top TV reporter in Kenya. We decided to dump him when we found out that he was ‘playing’ the two of us. We beat him at his own game!
Sauti Sol’s publicist Anyiko Owoko is an entertainment presenter on KBC’s Grapevine show. She was at the University of Nairobi’s, School of Journalism, Class of 2009.
