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Kenya: Acting Bug Bit Nyasuguta At an Early Age
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The Nation (Nairobi)
COLUMN
22 March 2008
Posted to the web 21 March 2008
Anniel Njoka
Nairobi
The name Eunice Wambui may not ring a bell to many people. But mention Nyasuguta and the reaction will invariably be a knowing smile then laughter.
Nyasuguta is the village woman in the Vitimbi programme aired by the national broadcaster, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), television every Monday evening. The local drama series has been entertaining Kenyans for more than four decades.
And watching it, one remembers the adage: You can get a man out of a village, but you cannot get the village out of him.
Wambui started acting at 10 years, but only in churches.
She was a member of a Nairobi group, the Maximum Miracle Centre, which toured the country preaching and taking part in drama to entertain the huge congregations at the religious crusades.
After some years she enrolled for a guidance and counselling course conducted by the Family Planning Association of Kenya and graduated as a peer educator.
Lady Luck smiled on her in 2004 when she was inducted into KBC's Radio Theatre and Hallo Children programmes. A year later, veteran Vitimbi character Mama Kayai (Mary Khabele) noticed her talent and invited her for an audition. "In fact, had it not been for Mama Kayai, perhaps I would not have ended up as an actress," says the 25-year-old.
But she had only a minor role at Vitimbi, and she had stints in Tahidi High as the headgirl. But she soon gave up the latter when Vitimbi gave her a permanent job. Mama Kayai played a key role in nurturing Wambui's talent, and it was she who inducted her into another KBC drama series, Kivunja Mbavu.
She has also done radio and TV commercials.
In Vitimbi she plays Mogaka's wife who has just come to the city from the village, and the village in her does not go away. Walking with her in the Nairobi streets one realises that she is a down-to-earth woman who occasionally stops to chat with her fans. "Without my fans, I have no job," she says.
She adds that at her city residential area, children jam-pack her house and stay for hours on end. "They just enjoy staying with a celebrity," Wambui says, not without a touch of smug satisfaction.
In her youth, her mother Rachael Nyambura was against her involving in acting, arguing that it would interfere with her education. But her sister Charity Muthoni and father were quite supportive.
When not acting, Wambui is either with the family or joins her mother at her used clothes shop at Gikomba market.
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Her husband, David Otieno, does not have a problem with her playing Mogaka's wife. After all, he argues, it is only acting and she earns a living from it.
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