Timothy Njugush Kimani is one of the biggest names in Kenyan comedy, boasting a portfolio that has left a lasting mark on the Kenyan entertainment industry.
However, many might not know about the dark and unfortunate past the father of two endured before rising to the top as a comedic luminary.
In his recent memoir, Whispers from My Childhood: Through Thick and Thin, the funnyman revealed that he was diagnosed with ankyloglossia, a condition where the tip of the tongue is tied to the floor of the mouth by the frenulum.
His mother first noticed something was amiss about a month after his birth when she observed that he did not cry like other infants.
Despite being her firstborn, she instinctively knew something was wrong. It took doctors three weeks of observations and tests at Meru County General Hospital to confirm the condition.
“This condition meant many things then. There was a possibility of me never being able to develop speech," he said.
A procedure was eventually performed to correct it. “Finally, on the third week of trying, a procedure was performed at Meru General Hospital ‘peeling’ back the frenulum,” Njugush recalls.
In the biography, Njugush's mother really shines, as seen in another anecdote where she incentivized her sons to stop bed-wetting.
“It was between my brother and me. To make sure we got the sweet, you had to make sure you didn’t wet the bed. We would get sweets for not wetting the bed,” he fondly remembered.
Arguably, the toughest incident in his childhood was when a lonely Njugush tried taking his own life in April 2005 after his family relocated to Joska in Machakos County, leaving him behind in the village to stay with his aunt and complete school.
“Admittedly, to this day, I don’t know what I wanted to achieve with this (attempting suicide). Maybe I was a child confused by the intrigues of so much happening a little too fast. Or perhaps that’s how melancholy presents itself. I don’t know,” Njugush reflects in his book.
But thank God, he wasn't successful and is now serving us great and memorable content on a weekly basis.
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