Cheers to the New Year and a warm welcome to Daisy’s World

When the editor told me I will start writing a weekly column, my first reaction was excitement.

I was excited because when I became a journalist about five years ago, fresh from university, my biggest concern was that all content directed at young people was about celebrity news, the latest musician coming to stage a show at Ngong Race Course, or about the latest fad on social media.

Nothing inherently wrong with this content, but because I am not interested in such content, I felt I was not represented in the media.

I wanted to read about how a 23-year-old intern would get to the C-level, I was interested in what young tech enthusiasts were doing in incubation hubs… I was hungry for analytical content that questioned cosmologies in literature by African writers, and why some emerging African writers are decidedly revisionist, whether by design or accident.

I have been writing for Daily Nation for at least five years now. And while I know I have impacted and changed people’s lives, and will hopefully continue to do so, writing a column is a different ball game.

My opinions will come to you unfiltered, without the advantage of ‘hiding’ behind an interviewee. This realisation was the origin of my second reaction to the idea of writing a weekly column.

Because I am an avid reader (I am talking two fully stocked bookshelves) it was easy for great columnists, authors, journalists and essayists to come to my mind, even as I mused about joining this exclusive club of great thinkers and doers.

Full disclosure: I was a literature major in undergraduate, so you will hear a lot about the power of books, specifically, why you need to read often.

I also graduated with the equivalent of summa cum laude in my graduate school, so we might talk about hierarchy of influences and the ethics of studying Africa at some point.

Something else about me, I have a deep admiration for people who drink and finish all the tea in their cups because I have never been able to finish tea in a cup.

Thinking about writing a weekly brought to mind British journalist Michela Wrong and the grit and thick skin to write the way she does for publications such as New Statesman and Financial Times.

I thought of Nigerian author Okey Ndibe and his incisive pieces, which remind me all the time that truth is stranger than fiction.

I thought of Dr Godwin Murunga and Nasra Warah whose columns always remind me that I must read, and that for me to better the nation and the world, I have to be intellectually prepared. Macharia Gaitho, Jaindi Kisero and Sunny Bindra… columnists I deeply respect because of the dexterity with which they use English language to shed light on critical issues.

As a young woman, with the privilege of both access and education, I believe I speak for many when I say we need to raise the visibility of ambitious young people, put their opinions on the table and go beyond the usual packaging of who young people are.

Nigerian Writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her popular TED talk “The Danger of a single story”, says the problem with the single story is not that it is untrue, but that it is incomplete.

And so, while this column will not pretend to discover the eighth wonder of the world, for I possess no such powers, Daisy’s World will tell you about an ambitious millennial woman for whom ambition and fun are not mutually exclusive, a go-getter whose recipe is faith, strong networks and friendships, continuous upskilling, being at the right place at the right time and sometimes just sheer luck.

I hope Daisy’s World will encourage millennials and Gen Zs to be fearless, bold and passionate. But most importantly, Daisy’s World will encourage the ambitious young person to embrace their unique journey with confidence.

Cheers to the New Year, and a warm welcome to my world!

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