Kenyan comedians need to take responsibility for their wellbeing

Image: Churchill

Kenyan comedians need to stop placing the blame for everything on Churchill and his company. Why do I say this you ask? Well, because whenever anything terrible happens to a comic, the choral song of choice is that they are all because of Churchill or his company Laugh Industry in some capacity.

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Kenyan comedians aren’t a mad lot so ofcourse there is some truth to the fact that some of the people or some of the situations that are toxic in the Kenyan comedians’ space are from Churchill’s company but that is because it is the biggest company in that space and field.

kenyan comedians blame churchill
Owago and Churchill

That said and noted, it is almost like Kenyan comedians are not willing to assess their situations and taking responsibility for them. This is actually indicative of a “woah is me” and “poor me” mentality. And the underlying problem here is one of both lack of vision and lack of an appetite for risk and success.

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Kenyan comedians need to remember that Churchill wasn’t handed the perch he currently enjoys, he had to work for everything he got. When he started out, it wasn’t like he got anyone’s name or some uncle that introduced him to the right people. He started off by doing bit comedy on the Redykulas show.

churchill who created a home for Kenyan comedians

From there, he built himself up by networking and leveraging his already existing body of work and then when he had finally created a platform for himself, he opened it up to Kenyan comedians who lacked similar vision. So whether or not he is a problematic individual to work with or he hires problematic people to work with, you cannot ignore the fact that Kenyan comedians have just refused to put in the work to build their own platforms.

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Blaming Victor Ber for the death of an individual is seeking external players to apportion responsibility. When a comedian dies, it is unfortunate that the same song is sung: “These guys mistreat us” and we are treated to the choral performance of that award-winning song (not so award-winning) and then we wait for them to watch another of their ranks die before ululating and starting that well-worn song.

kenyan comedian kasee

The smart play at this point is for Kenyan comedians to decide to come together, leverage any relationships they have, create their own companies and do their comedy there. Or alternatively, organize comedy specials like Vivianne’s husband Sam West does. The only limit to this happening is their willingness to actually take the initiative to make it happen.

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Ozymandias

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay