The Moth’s seventh Nairobi Mainstage event will feature five storytellers under the theme Now or Never.
Adelle Onyango will host five storytellers from four African countries at the seventh Nairobi Mainstage event on November 7.
The Moth returns to Nairobi on November 7, bringing five storytellers together to share accounts of life-changing decisions. Their experiences span survival, illness, family responsibility and moments that demanded action.
Kenyan media personality Adelle Onyango will host the seventh Nairobi Mainstage event at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa’s LRC Auditorium. Under the theme Now or Never, speakers from Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Sierra Leone will recount defining personal experiences.
The Moth explores illness and difficult choices
Ugandan advocate Shakirah Namwanje will reflect on receiving an HIV diagnosis while holding on to her dream of motherhood. Her advocacy focuses on HIV and sexual and reproductive health rights.
Meanwhile, Kenyan human rights defender Bernard Mbugua will revisit his battle with tuberculosis as a teenager. His account centres on a difficult choice between traditional spiritual methods and modern medicine.
Both stories place health at the centre of decisions that shaped the speakers’ lives. The wider programme also explores how people respond when unexpected circumstances demand difficult choices.
Survival encounters and a new family responsibility
Nigerian artist and researcher Odun Orimolade will share a personal experience involving an armed robber. Kenyan hydrotherapist and swimming coach Anne Obure will also recount an encounter with danger. Her story follows a scuba-certification retreat that became a fight for survival.
For Sierra Leonean social scientist Mahmood Bangura, a family tragedy brought a different kind of responsibility. He will describe his decision to become his niece’s guardian after her mother’s death.
His account will also explore helping her access education and opportunities that her late mother would have wanted. Together, the five stories address the event’s focus on moments that leave little room for hesitation.
Personal stories before a shared audience
Producer Josephine Macharia said none of the five initially thought their experiences belonged on a global stage. However, she said each had lived through a defining moment that required action without further delay.
Onyango, who has hosted the Nairobi event for seven years, highlighted the connections such storytelling can create. She said hearing personal accounts together often connects strangers, making the stories a shared experience by the evening’s end.
The Moth brings people before live audiences to tell true stories from their own lives. In Nairobi, those accounts will centre on the choices each speaker faced when waiting was no longer an option.
