Exile –Citizen Tv’s investigative reporter Purity Mwambia has broken her silence two and half years since her investigative expose’ Guns Galore went viral.
Following her expose that was aired on Citizen Tv in the year 2021 over rogue police officers who had been hiring guns to thugs at a fee, Mwambia’s life became a matter of concern forcing her employer to flee the country.
And on May 30 while participating in a United States Department of States to deliberate the unique challenges faced by women in the news industry, Mwambia noted that her life has never remained the same after being abandoned in the U.S.
She was speaking on her life as a journalist of a major media outlet on a panel that centered the discussion on highs and lows in the media industry. The show was hosted by Bureau of Global Public Affairs.
Purity used the opportunity to reveal how her life changed to the worse as an exiled female reporter. She went on to claim that living in exile had also killed her career, midway.
“Thank you for this opportunity. My challenges are not very different from other investigative journalists in exile. First of all, when you come here from your country where you’ve done big stories, you’ve quoted all these people who are doing some corruption, big shots in the government… but believe me, when you come here, it’s like your voice is silenced,” Ms Mwambia said.
In her account, living in a foreign land had proved quite a challenge not only to her but many female journalists battling security issues.
“It’s hard to navigate the US media landscape, especially for global journalists. It’s so hard. I’ve been here for two years and I’ve only been able to do one story with one of the local companies,” she added.
Mwambia noted that once she was flown to the U.S.A, the organization that facilitated that immediately forgot about her.
Her moving to the US was after she started receiving night life-threatening calls and texts from senior police officers and gunmen around the city.
“Some who come here say it is like the American dream but has its own challenges. You find yourself in a place where there is no one to talk to, no one to run to. Personally, I was brought here by an organisation and they abandoned me. They left me, I’m on the verge of homelessness because I don’t know what to do next.
“Every day when I walk past all these metro buses and I see these homeless people. It’s one of those stories I would have loved to tell as a journalist, but now I walk as if I’m literally in their shoes, not knowing what’s going to happen to me,” Purity Mwambia said.
Mwambia was a common name in Kenya during her career at Citizen Tv which is owned by Royal Media Services RMS.
