Her's is a story of a chubby brown girl fighting to find herself in a world where women didn't believe in success and moving from the life of poverty.
Brought up in a mud house in Huruma, top actress Neomi ng'anga has defied all odds and made a place for herself in the entertainment industry. In an interview on True Love she tells the story of how she lost her mother at 14 years of age and was left to fend for herself in the guidance of her older brother. It wasn't long before she found herself fighting for dear life from a hardcore criminal who wanted to rape her.
"My uncles and aunts were distant and I was left in that house with only my brother who was 26 to care for me. Three months after my mum was gone, a famous hardcore criminal called Stone broke into our house, held a gun to my head and attempted to rape me. My brother was never home and had it not been for my loud screams that brought the neighbours to my aid, my story would have been different."
But this was just the beginning.
Neomi who has now worked as a radio presenter, a marketing executive at GoTV, a recognized actress in her own right, queen of the billboards and owner of a fashion house dubbed Style by Neomi, opened about the struggle of growing up around women who settled for sex solicitation as a source of income.
She says, "Living in the ghetto as a teenager was rough. Sometimes I was approached by older men soliciting for sex, other times some women would send them to our house saying there was a young girl there."
She blamed it on the curse of poverty.
Neomi believes that most people are still in the slums because they got comfortable. She says that their greatest undoing is giving in to the sense of belonging that the slum offers. She says that her
"When you live in the ghetto and you can afford to put some food on the table and buy some clothes, you get comfortable. The sense of belonging the sum offers, the happy-go-lucky spirit that many people have- nothing is ever a big deal and often this makes people to dream of no other life. That life seems enough. Everyone is resolved to it . But I wanted more and I always stuck out like a sore thumb."
She started life on her own at the age of 19.
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