 What's up everybody? Welcome to SPM Buzz. My name is Liz Jackson and I am joined by an amazing guest. I'm going to let him introduce himself and then we proceed. Hey, what's up? Hi, what's up? How are you? How are you? How are you doing? How are you? My name is Bogua. That's my name. Yes, I'm... And... Let me... That's exactly what we were talking about here. I want you to put me on the spot. I haven't found... Okay, I mean transition. I mean that phase of transitioning careers. Like I feel like I'm transitioning from what people used to know me as on TV to now being a digital content creator. So to begin with, I want us to start this story from campus. Yeah, not high school. Let's go to campus. What were you studying and did you do something in journalism? What exactly? What was Kimani doing in campus? Yes, I studied journalism. It was easy for me. It's what I always wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be in front of the camera. There were no two ways about it. I knew this is what I wanted to do. So when choosing the courses after KCSE, that's what I did. I was like journalism, journalism, journalism. If there was a fourth and fifth option, journalism, journalism. That's what I wanted to do. Did you do it after a degree level or diploma? I had a degree. I was in more university. All the way in Eldorat. Alright, so talk to us about how you got into Citizen TV. Citizen TV was something that came unexpectedly. I wasn't expecting to work for Citizen TV. I was working at MTV then. I was a digital producer at MTV. Actually, I remember MTV. The MTV YouTube channel got banned at some point by YouTube because of copyright issues. So the page was stricken down. So I was part of the digital team that helped bring it back to what it is. So the MTV page that you see now on YouTube, we started it from scratch with a team of digital producers. So that's the job that I was working. I was doing digital content. I had a show. It was called the Entertainment Brief, which was towards the end of this. They used to have a news bulletin show between, I think, 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. So I used to come in around 12.30 to 1 p.m. Just giving an entertainment round up. What's happening in the entertainment scene? This is 2017, 2016-2017. Back then, TV was still, mainstream was still holding on to a very significant bunch of the audience. I feel like now it has gone down, but that's what I was doing then. So my boss at the time, or my former boss at the time, he moved to Citizen TV. So one afternoon he just sent me an email. He was like, send me your CV. There's an opportunity here, and I sent him my CV. A few minutes later I got called by a HR person from Citizen and they were like, yeah, we want you to come work with us. It wasn't even, it was a no-brainer for me. I was like, yeah, Citizen. Of course I want to go to work for Citizen. It's the biggest TV station in Kenya. That afternoon, I think sometime in May of 2018, that's how I ended up at Citizen TV. And for how long did you stay there? For about two years. Two years and some months give or take. Yes, that's how long I stayed there. It feels like, I don't know why I look back at it. I feel like I worked there for a very long time, but it was only two years of my life. And how was the experience? The experience was amazing. I think as a creator, and this is what I really am thankful for, it's one of the things that I'm really grateful for, is that having an audience, having people to watch your content, even when you're failing or even when you're doing it badly, having that audience, it gave me a platform. Because after I started doing the many shows that I was doing there, I wasn't doing one show, I was producing many shows and also hosting and writing many shows, I always felt like I didn't have to struggle to think about whether people see what I did or not, or whether enough people see what I did or not. The audience was there, so it was your job to do what you do at your best. And I think that is a platform. I'm so grateful for them giving me that opportunity because it grew my name and a lot of people now know me from back then and they follow me on what I'm doing now. I feel like it's not like people forgot what I was doing and they've given me a second chance. So if it were not for citizen TV, I wouldn't be where I am. And that is something that I'm very much aware of. So let's talk about the period where you left a citizen. Was it something that you decided or how did that go? Yes, I decided to leave at some point. I was feeling very banned out. I guess I should have taken leave, but at that time I wanted to transition because I felt, again, I think it's a, what do I call it? It's like a quarter life crisis where you're like you're 20, it happens when you're 25, between 25 and 30, that's like the period of the quarter life crisis. I think it happens a lot for men because at that time you're making decisions that are going to literally impact the rest of your life. So it was like, I was feeling very conflicted. I wanted to do stand up comedy back then. I joined a stand up comedy club here in Nairobi. It's called stand up collective. So I started doing comedy there. And I was like, will I, so do I become a stand up comedian and leave journalism? Because I'm a very focused person. I'm a person who's not talented in very many things. So I try to do the few things that I'm talented in. Like I try to focus on them and be very good at them. So it was very hard for me to focus on stand up comedy and my TV career because I was producing many shows. At the same time, I didn't have time to work on my material and practice and keep my stand up career going. So I decided to leave stand up for a while. I decided to just shelve it and I was like, I'll come back to you later. So that time I was like, I don't know what to do. So I approached a friend of mine who introduced me to Farid Kimani at that time and I went to Farid and I told him what I was feeling. He was like, oh, I understand what you're going through. And he was like, come and work with us. But then before I went to Nusu Nusu, the COVID hits and everything was put on hold. I was like, okay, I think don't leave Citizen yet. I don't think I'm going to be able to hire now because COVID is here. I think our fast gig was a magical Kenya Open. That was a fast gig that we were supposed to do with Farid. But then everything stopped. COVID came, nobody knew where things were going. And in the middle of that, I got sick. My bipolar exploded. So for me, as people were suffering through COVID, I think throughout the COVID period, I did not experience COVID as other people experienced it because for me, I was sick with bipolar. I was even out of hospital all the time. So COVID was something that even I was like, I didn't care what other people are going through with COVID because I was, I mean, I was in psych ward in and out. So it was quite a hard time for me, I would say. And so from COVID to 2023, you were not working? Yeah, I haven't worked. This is, I haven't worked since 2021 because I left the job that I was in during the COVID period. Actually, after recovering for the first phase of the bipolar exploding, at that time I didn't even know it was bipolar. I didn't even know I was bipolar back then. I was just like, okay, you were sick and in hospital and now I'm fine. And it took like, I had like six months where it was sickness, sickness, sickness for six months. And then it kind of dissipated at some point between January, no February of 2020 to around August. So that August I went to coast for a while and I went for a short holiday and after the holiday I was like, okay, I think I'm feeling fine. It was weird what was happening to me. I didn't even know what was happening to me, but I was like, okay, I think I'm out of that weird phase of being taken to hospital and out of hospital. I don't know why that was happening. So I came back and I took another job at Kenyans.co.ke. I worked there for a year between 2020 September to 2021 September and I left Kenyans in September of 2021 and from there I haven't worked again until this year, in September of this year actually. So that was like a two-year sabbatical, a two-year forced sabbatical. I say it was a forced sabbatical because I did not know what was going on with me, but when I was at Kenyans I was feeling so depressed and back then when you're suffering from a mental illness, you don't know exactly what it is. You're just feeling things. You're just feeling so tired, you're worn out, you're so irritable, you're smoking a lot. I was smoking a lot. I was smoking like a packet a day or even more. Sometimes I would smoke a packet and by 5 I would buy it in the morning when I was going into work and by 5 in the evening it's all done. I'm going to buy another one. I was totally into it. So I got to some point and I felt like I don't think I can continue with this job. So I was like, let me just take a break, whatever happens happens. I had a bit of savings so I was like, okay, I think I'm just going to jump into the wind and jump into the ocean and hope that I find myself somewhere. So between 2021 September and 2023 September, I was just totally ill. Manic had major, major episodes of mania. I think the longest time I was in hospital for continuously was three months I was just battling mania and depression without knowing what they were but this year finally I think I got to a moment where I was like, okay. Now I know what is happening with me because I've seen the pattern. I do drugs and this happens. I smoke cigarettes and then this happens. My mind slowly starts to vea off from reality and I do weed and it happens faster. I drink alcohol and then it starts to spiral out of, I start to spiral bit by bit out of sanity. And so I was like, okay, so this is all I have to do. I have to stop doing drugs and in July of this year, that's when I decided, well, I'm going to quit drugs for good but it was hard though. It was hard to decide that because when I think, when you're suffering from mental illness, it's not only you. The person who suffers the most is not you. It's the people around you who know you when you're okay. They keep asking themselves, can't you see you're hurting yourself? But when you're going through it, when you're the person who is into it, it's like whatever. What problem do you have with me smoking weed? What's the problem with that? Just doing drugs, everybody does drugs. I just react differently to them. But when you get to that point of self-realization and you look back and you're like, okay, so I think I've been in hospital so many times and now I'm like, okay, so why exactly am I coming to hospital all the time and why are people not allowing me to be outside and why am I the one who is in psych ward and not the people I was doing drugs with. So with that realization, you get to the point where it's either you stop doing drugs, you make a conscious decision to stop doing drugs and stop coming back to hospital or you decide to keep doing drugs and say that this is my life now. And I feel like that's the point where a lot of drug addicts, every drug addict has that point. Like you're like, should I keep going and say screw everybody else and I'll keep doing drugs? Or you decide, okay, I think it's time for me to change. And luckily for me, I had enough reason to come back because I remembered, wow, I used to be on TV, I used to have this career, I hadn't worked. For me, it wasn't, I wasn't even bothered because, well, not working. I was like, okay, I don't care. I was just smoking weed and walking on the streets and you walk in the streets and people can see you clearly lost your mind because you haven't showered in like five days and you look dirty, your shoes are dirty, whatever you look like. You know, you basically look like somebody who doesn't have their life together. So that was my journey. So let's talk about when you shared your struggle online. One of the people who reached out to you was Nyako. Could you tell us about the first interaction that you had with Nyako and how did she impact your life at that time? Actually, with Nyako, I didn't know who she was until the day she raised money for me because I wasn't on social media. And I realized, actually, if it weren't for the drugs, the drugs and the psychosis and the mania and all of those bad things that happened to me while I was away, I really enjoyed my time because I was never on social media. All I was doing was just literally just do drugs and no phones. I never used to get online. So I would get online like once in a while when I would get my dad's phone and log into my Twitter and treat some shit. But I didn't know what was happening. I wasn't keeping up with what is happening on social media. So I felt like that part of it was good because now when you come back to social media, you're like, okay, so there's so much happening. There's so much that has happened. There's people like that. I had no idea who she was. And then this day after doing, I think I did that video on a Saturday and that video, like me coming out to people, it was the last option in my book. It was Plan Z in my books. Like I hadn't, I didn't have any other option. And when I was in hospital coming out, I was like, because at that time I had gone to hospital so many times that people around me had gotten tired. So I knew that when I get out of hospital, people are not going to exactly be lining up to help me get my life together, like the people that I know around me. So that wasn't, it was very clear in my mind that that wasn't going to happen. But I did that video on a Saturday and then on Monday of that, of the next week, actually on the Sunday of that week, I went to my mums and I logged into my Instagram and I saw Obena had DM'd me on my Instagram because the video had gone viral like can we do the show tomorrow, be at Lavington at 6pm exactly and then we'll take it up from there. So after I did Obena's show, apparently Nyako saw my story of Obena's show and she decided to call me on that Tuesday. So it was Saturday, Saturday I did the video. It was the last option I had. I was like, okay wait, I used to be famous man. I used to know, people used to say hi to me on the streets. I was like, okay, I think these are the people I'm going to go to because they haven't been around me to know what was happening to me. I was like, okay, if they give me a chance to get my life back together, I will get my life back together. So that was the last option. So on that Saturday I did the video. Sunday I saw Obena's message. It was like, I'll be there tomorrow. Then on Monday I did Obena's show. The following Tuesday or the next day on Tuesday, apparently Nyako had seen me on Obena's show and she was like, wow, this is a good story. Let's help this guy. So somebody just, because I had given my number at Obena's show, so it was easy for people around her to call me. So I was called by someone and she was like, I work with Nyako. We want to get you on her TikTok live to help you raise money. I was like, yeah, sure. In about 15 or so minutes I went somewhere, I sat down like, okay, so I joined the live. I didn't even know how to operate TikTok. I was like, I was all over the place. But I got on her live and she mobilized people to raise money for me. I don't know. For me it was like, you know one of those things that you you don't even know if Gratitude is enough because you're like, how did it happen? It all happened so fast for me and prior to that Tuesday I didn't even know who she was because I was not on social media. But then the way she mobilized people, I mean, you know people with kind hearts because I didn't know who she was and for me when I look at her I'm like, you're a person who's God sent man because I don't know what I would have done without her. Do you think she's one of the people who actually just gave you the strength to come back? Yes, she did. She definitely did. She gave me some really solid advice after that and she was like, you know, use the money well, don't waste the money and she was like, now I did what I did out of a clean heart and it was clear to see because I didn't know who she was and the fact that I didn't know who she was is what makes me have a lot of gratitude because she literally held the stranger. So we were strangers by then. It's like meeting a stranger on the streets and literally giving them money. That is and not just like 20 bob for Sapa for that day. It's like, here is money to change your whole life because now I'm like, from then I was able to rent a place to stay. Now I've paid my rent in advance. I don't have to worry about a place to stay. I was able to help my sister with her small business. My sister is a single mom and the baby daddy decided to, you know, to abandon the baby. So I was like, he was spaning me to see how I was suffering that. So I was like, now let me help her get her job back together. My two actually have three sisters and all of them are doing different things and I was able to help them in a small way that I could to help them get something going on with them. And I don't know, it was so surreal. So now the whole Nyakwa situation, you're able to get a place to sleep and you're able to get your life together. You started doing content. And how can you say right now, what are you doing and how is it and what are your plans? What are we expecting? I think after people did what they did, I mean it was, I am one of those people who, you know, I was sceptic at some point about, you know, whether, you know, with celebrity, I'm like, celebrity is something you can't. You can't, you can't touch it. I was like, you know, it's nothing. And I still find it amusing that people will stop this truth and say hi to me. I'm like, oh, it's just sweet. I do my job and then people see what I'm doing and then my life kind of changes because when a lot of people are seeing what you're doing and people are stopping you on the streets and say, hey, we saw your story and keep going, keep going. I felt like, or brother, I know that Alori is being expected from me as well. So right now I'm doing, I started a show called Unbroken which is basically me interviewing people on the streets, which I love, I really love doing that. And so it's going well. And it's, it's... Fun, I think I told you. Yeah, you told me that I was like, I wanted to stop doing this. I told you that I'm a person, I'm not able to focus on many, many things at the same time because I feel like if you want to be good at something, you have to do one thing and do it consistently and be very good at it. But then I noticed it's still content. I'm still creating. The street shows you have to come up with a question that is relatable to people. If it's humor, you have to come up with a question that will produce humor and I'm like, that's creating, that's what you're doing. And I realized that even when I was doing broken news, I was writing all of that material. You know, sometimes when you do it and you... I am one of those people who's so hard on themselves. I'm as good as my last show. Yeah, so I'm one of those people who's very hard on themselves. I'm as good as my last show and my best show is the next show. I still find it hard to believe that I'm back to doing what I love. So now a lot of... I started my YouTube and within no time I had over 3,000 subscribers and it's still growing and now I'm back to stand-up comedy. I told you about my stand-up and I had left stand-up for a while. So I decided that I'd be doing this. I haven't done it for a while. So it takes time for you to get used to performing live on stage. So I did my first routine last Friday and it was good. I felt... I was like, now I have tasted blood. I am going back to the stage and I'm like, now it's... Okay, you're going back to the stage but now you have to write good material. You have to prove to people that you can... This is what you want to do because you have to make people laugh and that is one of the hardest things to do. But then I looked back and I was like, okay, with broken news I was like, I was doing it every Friday. Now I'm going to make them laugh but in another way. I'm ready for it. This is something that will be happening every Friday. So one thing I would like to commend you about is when Nyako actually helps you you are very honest. You went to Godhouse and I think you actually listened to her because most of the times Nyako helps people and they are very ungrateful. I feel like you're very grateful and you should just be consistent with the content. It's very nice. It's relatable. It is funny. It is comical and we cannot wait to see what you have in store for us. So before we finish the show please plug all your social media platforms and where we can find you. Yeah, you can find me everywhere. I am Kimanimbogo. It's not E.M. Kimanimbogo. I don't know why people still call me E.M. It's not E.M. Look, it's M. I am Kimanimbogo across social media on Facebook Instagram and Twitter. I am Kimanimbogo. And I don't know why why do you people not follow me on Instagram? I feel like a lot of people follow me on TikTok. My TikTok is now almost getting to 60,000 and on Instagram. I don't know what I need to people on Instagram. It's just too completely too... It's actually easier. No, but it's actually easier to have followers on TikTok. The algorithm there is a bit supportive on Instagram. You kind of have to work hard. You have to sweat. What have you done at least to get so many followers on Instagram? Consistency. Trust me, you will never go wrong It's consistent. So guys, please follow him on Instagram. He's about to hit 10K. Please, team S.P.M.Baz, just go to I am Kimanimbogo on Instagram. Make sure you follow him. Subscribe to his YouTube channel. Follow him on TikTok. Kila Mahali. My name is Liz Jackson. See you on the next one.