Neomi​ Big, Bold & Oh So Beautiful

Plus-size TV and radio star Neomi Wambui Ng’ang’a may have been born in the ghetto, but she did not stay there. The gorgeous, audacious and funny actress and fashionista opens up to CATE ODERA about defying expectations and carving her own niche in life.

- Cate Odera

Neomi Ng’ang’a is larger than life. she is bubbly and boisterous, with a loud, hearty, body-shaking laugh that makes everyone turn and smile. she doesn’t know how to whisper, and when we meet in the utamu restaurant at tune Hotel in Westlands, nairobi, she announces merrily to all and sundry: ‘so i’m finally going to be on the cover of true love magazine!’

Her energy is infectious. N.E.O.M.I. not Naomi – as her business card reads – is living life in the bold lane. she’s young, popular and successful, with the world at her feet.

But her other persona, Naomi Nganga, didn’t know this life. that little girl was born in the sprawling slums of Huruma on a rainy day in October 1987. the only girl in a family of seven boys, she was the last born and the apple of her mother’s eye.

‘My mum was always so proud of us and did everything to ensure that we never lacked anything, despite us living in the slum,’ Neomi says. ‘she was an aggressive person and a good cook. We ate meat almost every day, which was a big deal in the ghetto.’ 

Neomi fishes out her phone to show me an old photo of herself at the age of seven. ‘as you can see, it was a house made of mud and i was a happy baby. My mum owned the land where this house stood, so i think that’s the reason we lived there.’

Her mum and her ever travelling father may have been poor, but they wanted her to have a good education, so they enrolled her in a private missionary school in ruaraka.

‘While in that school (Brethren’s) i made friends with pupils who did not live in the slum and enjoyed birthdays and had a fridge in their houses. i wanted that life for myself. i wanted to one day live in a brick house, outside of the slum,’ she recalls.