Every media personality in this Country or elsewhere in the World has a history of how he/she made into the limelight. Others had it easy while others had it rough, but giving up was not an option.
Others were welcomed with open arms; others were out rightly rejected while others were tossed up and down; right, left and center before finally making it to the high table of the media industry in the Country.
Hot 96 and Citizen TV Presenter Willis Raburu vividly remembers how he was rejected by an executive of a Kenyan TV Station 11 years ago. While still a student at the Moi University Main campus in Eldoret, Raburu decided to show up for a job interview at a TV station in Nairobi to try out his hand at landing a job.
He was not yet through with his University studies, and hoped to get a job in Nairobi, with an aim of transferring from the Main campus to the Nairobi campus to complete his studies.
According to Raburu, instead of getting the job he met a TV executive who dismissed his chances of ever landing a TV job. Speaking to Radio Citizen’s Willy Tuva and Selly Kadot Amutabi on Tuesday’s Mambo Mseto Show, Raburu however decided to keep the name of the TV Station under wraps.
“I was told you don’t have a voice for TV,” recalled the 10 over 10 Citizen TV Presenter. He left the office dejected. But as fate would have it, he met his current colleague at Hot 96 and Citizen TV Jeff Koinange who assured him that one day, he will make it.
“As I was leaving, I met Jeff in the elevator. He told me my brother; I heard what that man told you. Don’t you ever give up, one day everybody will know your name,” Raburu recalled.
The two might have met at the K24 offices, because it was the first TV Station Jeff worked for in Kenya after leaving CNN, before joining KTN and later on the Royal Media Services which own Citizen TV, Radio Citizen and Hot 96 among other Radio Stations.
Raburu said that he decided to pick up Jeff’s words in order to become a hit in the Kenyan media scene.
After school, he got an internship opportunity at Citizen TV, before being employed in October 2010. And as they say, the rest is now history.
