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News about digital content creator Mungai Eve and her former boyfriend Director Trevor is currently the buzz in the local entertainment circles following their much-publicised split.
But little is known about their captivating humble beginning in content creation, a skill they mastered so well and moulded their rise to fame in a typical rags-to-riches fashion, at least from Eve’s own perspective.
In a July 2022 interview, on their now defunct Mungai Eve YouTube channel, where fellow content creator Celestine Ndinda alias ‘Wakavinye’ played host, Eve narrated how she met Trevor and got inspired to create content.
The journey began back in September 2019, when Eve, then aged 20, had travelled to Nairobi to attend college in Juja to pursue a journalism course.
Director Trevor was then a fourth-year student at JKUAT.
Born and brought up in Murang’a, Eve, who described herself as ambitious, said it was her first time in Nairobi.
“I used to come but had never gone past Roysambu,” she said. “I had come to school and then life happened.”
She said she studied only the first semester then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and disrupted learning; she went back to Murang’a while Trevor, who she had met in early 2019 during a photo shoot, went to Kisii.
After a six-month stint at home, she came back to Nairobi in September 2020 on Trevor’s invitation.
She said Trevor had landed a gig at the national broadcaster and travelled back to the city in July that year and thought it wise to have her back as well to figure things out together.
“I lied to my mother that we had been recalled to school. That day I was leaving I told myself I was not coming back to this place, not like home is not nice, home is nice…but I’m just born an overthinker. If I have nothing to do, I think a lot, so it was tough staying home.
“The only person that I knew would accommodate me was Trevor. When we met, each of us was with their high school partners but it was not making any sense,” Eve revealed.
Image: Instagram
She said her father wanted her to pursue teaching but her heart was in media and Trevor’s knowledge of media-related stuff including camera operation and video directing endowed her with him.
“We were really good friends. I started keeping him close knowing I would get help with things like camera because it was the course I was pursuing. Then it reached a point where his relationship became shaky and so did mine.
“The guy I was dating wasn’t inspiring me, we were on different paths. Then Trevor started telling me there’s something in me he felt there was something I could do,” Eve narrated.
“I wondered what that was; I knew all I could do was just sit home and wait for schools to reopen. He said maybe I should open a YouTube channel.
“I was like, ‘What is YouTube channel?’.”
“Were you on social media?” Ndinda asked.
“No, even my Instagram was opened by Trevor. I did not know. Mimi, I’m the real definition of kienyeji,” Eve opened up.
“I didn’t know. What is a YouTube channel? What does it do? He told me since I was doing journalism, we would record videos then upload instead of staying idle,” she said.
Eve said she followed her doctor’s advice and stopped overthinking and jumped onto the idea.
She said their very first video was Gengetone Festival which Trevor shot and uploaded on the channel because she was still camera shy.
“A boy had died at the event so he told me to voice record. I agreed because no one would see me. The reception was good.”
Eve said at that time, backstreet rap group Mbogi Genje was the talk of town and were trending courtesy of their unique rap style laced with heavy sheng lyrics that are hard to decipher even amongst the most fluent speakers of the lingua.
She said Trevor suggested that they ride on the hype and interview people on what they felt about the new rap group and their music genre.
“It was tough at first, people were camera shy, you could interview two or even one person the whole day,” she said.
During the shoot, Eve explained, one interviewee suggested that they should instead interview members of a rival group to Mbogi Genje as they had grown up together in the hood.
“We went and did that story; it was like they were beefing. It was our second or third video after the one of the event. That was our breakthrough, from there everyone knew Mungai Eve and started saying I should go interview them.”
Eve revealed that the character in the video that catapulted them to stardom was self-styled Sheng president Madocho.
“By the way even the name Mungai Eve, it’s Trevor who came up with it. I’m called Evelyn but people used to call me Eva. Trevor said Eva was not captivating.”
She was initially hesitant to have her name as the brand name but Trevor insisted saying “I feel like there is something that you have and I just want to push you”, Eve said.
The rest, she said, was history. At the point of the rebrand, the channel had over 750,000 subscribers.
Following their split, Trevor rebranded it to Kenya Online Media and on Wednesday, unveiled Rael Wangare as Eve’s replacement.
BY EMMANUEL WANJALA