Pulse: Your story has been described as a big tale, just where are you coming from?
Nicah: My life is a testimony that I am using to minister to young girls. I have been through a lot and it is only God who can deliver you from what I was going through. I am not sure where to start.
P: You gave birth to your first daughter at the age of 15. Were you dating at such a young age?
N: It was a tragedy of sorts. I was living with a single father then as he had separated with my mother when I was nine years old.
Life was tough for us, there was no one teaching me anything to do with sex and I hardly knew anything about the risks involved. Everyone, all the girls in school could boast of their boyfriends, how sweet sex was and how they could get money from them.
P: So you got yourself a boyfriend?
N: The guy was my next door neighbour. Due to peer pressure I gave in to him and the same day he broke my virginity, I got pregnant. I wasn’t even aware I was pregnant until much later as I was naïve.
P: What really attracted you to him?
N: He was a banker and he looked well off. He would give me Sh1,000 pocket money. That way, I would brag to my schoolmates that I was in a good relationship. After learning that I was pregnant, I left the estate and I have never seen him again.
My dad kicked me out of the house and I ended up in the streets of Eldoret town before I rented a mad house whose rent was Sh250 a month. I started doing odd jobs like washing clothes for Sh50 to make ends meet.
P: We also learn that you were a bar maid in Kisii. How did you end up there?
N: I am coming to that, but while still in the mad house, life became so hard to a point where I could not afford the Sh250 rent. So I returned home where my dad received me.
However, by then he had remarried and my step mother warned that we could not live with them. She became quite cruel to me and so I had to leave again, back to the mad house. While still washing clothes for people and doing odd jobs in hotels, a man approached me and told me that he would offer me a job in Kisii town and so I left with him.
By this time, I had taken my baby back home as my dad had now married another woman after parting ways with the cruel one.
P: So you left for Kisii with a stranger?
N: When you are desperate, you don’t care what a stranger might do to you. Upon getting to Kisii town, he gave me a job in his bar as a bar maid. It was yet another hard challenge as I had just given my life to Christ some few months before this. Men would hit on me and ask me to give into their sexual advances just like it was the case with the other barmaids. Of course, the image everyone has about barmaids is that they are loose, sexually speaking, which is not true.
P: Did you like the pay and the job?
N: Not really. I was simply surviving through and that is why when another man came through and told me that he had a job for me in Nairobi, I left with him. This guy rented me a house in Kayole and introduced me to his business, the illegal business of making fake money.
I posed as a businesswoman to clients and pretended that I was flying across the world as these guys used me badly. They could make like Sh5 million per transaction and offer me about Sh50,000 which I would burn with friends. It was a risky affair.
One day while in town, a prominent personality pulled off his car and asked his driver to call me. Even though at first he was interested with me, after I narrated my story, he ended asking an NGO to offer me a job where I was being paid Sh110,000 per month. This is how I got my breakthrough.
P: Is that when you started singing?
N: Yes, I ended up meeting the likes of Mr T and my husband Dr Ofweneke who mentored me. The first song was a collabo, I Do, a remix track I did with Mr T and Vinny Flava. It was released in 2014. Since, I have released Pagawisha and my new song Ushuhuda, which is my testimony.
P: What is your word to young girls out of all these experiences?
N: That God answers prayers. This business of sponsors won’t help them. As much as a married man will give you money, he will never leave his wife for you, neither will you get satisfaction out of such relationships.
