It wasn’t the heat of Garissa that sent a young Kiswahili teacher fleeing from the classroom and back to Nairobi less than a year after his appointment. It was his love of journalism, a career he always wanted to follow, despite being trained as a teacher.
The youngster felt he would ‘waste away’ in North Eastern if he continued teaching, so one morning he threw the chalk away, bade his friends farewell and came to Nairobi where he knew he could follow his dream and passion. He never looked back.
Decades later, Tom Osanjo, speaks to BLISS OASIS AFRICA podcast and narrates his life in journalism since that fateful day he absconded from work, to working as a contributor to various publications before eventually landing serious jobs in the mainstream media and eventually international press.
Tom, who now works as communication officer with an international organization based in Nairobi, also tells of his combat with mental health challenges which he went through recently culminating to spending sometime in a rehab which nursed him back to health.
This led him to launching a website as his contribution towards informing the masses about the little understood phenomena from which many Kenyans are suffering, mainly due to ignorance.
You can watch his interview at our podcast here – https://youtu.be/EEYv93zCEGg
You can learn more about the mental health through his website www.lotusconnections.org