There are some people you listen to and immediately know you would either be very good friends with them or argue with them for hours. Auntie Jemimah is that woman for me.
Not because I agree with everything she says, but because I admire how loudly she says it.
In a culture that has perfected the art of teaching women to soften their opinions, lower their voices and think about how they will be perceived before they speak, Auntie Jemimah seems to have decided that she simply does not have the time.
And perhaps that is what I find most fascinating about her.
Wangari Nguri, the woman behind Auntie Jemimah, has had quite a journey to this point. She trained as an accountant, despite always wanting to be in theatre and radio, battled addiction as a young woman and went to rehabilitation in 2006. In 2016, a comedy video turned her into a viral sensation. Her comedy has since evolved into something much more personal, particularly through Maitũ Mũkabete, where she has turned childhood, addiction, self-esteem, relationships, motherhood and the loss of her unborn child into stories that make audiences laugh, cry and reflect.
But lately, it is not just her stories that have stayed with me.
It is her questions.
“Marriage, to me, is unnatural. If it were natural, it would have started with animals.”
Imagine saying that out loud in Kenya.
Marriage is one of those institutions we are rarely encouraged to interrogate. We are taught to want it before we are taught to ask whether we actually want it. A woman reaches a certain age and the questions begin. When are you getting married? When are the children coming? What are you waiting for?
Auntie Jemimah has never seemed particularly interested in following that timetable. In an earlier interview, she spoke about not feeling pressured to marry and questioned whether marriage might interfere with the personal goals she still wanted to pursue.
And then there is sex.
She is particularly provocative when she talks about women’s sexual freedom and the ways purity culture has shaped women’s relationship with pleasure. Her argument, as I understood it, is deeply uncomfortable because it forces us to consider whether many women were actually taught to enjoy sex or merely taught to be good at sex when it became their marital duty.
We spent years telling girls that sex was dangerous, dirty and something that could destroy their worth.
Then they became wives and were expected to suddenly become comfortable with it.
Who taught us that?
That is the question I kept coming back to while listening to her.
Who taught us that a woman’s respectability is tied to her sexual history? Who decided that wanting pleasure makes a woman less respectable? Who decided that marriage automatically makes intimacy acceptable? And who decided that being a “good woman” requires a lifetime of obedience to rules we never got to write?
I don’t think Auntie Jemimah is necessarily asking women to reject marriage, morality or tradition.
I think she is asking us to examine them.
That is a very different thing.
And maybe that is why her loudness matters.
Because sometimes the woman who says the outrageous thing is not necessarily the woman with all the answers. She is simply brave enough to ask the question everybody else is whispering.
That has become the power of Auntie Jemimah.
Her comedy is no longer just about getting a laugh. It is about making uncomfortable things discussable. Maitũ Mũkabete has increasingly become a space where personal pain, womanhood, relationships and identity can sit alongside humour. Even her story of losing her unborn baby became part of a larger conversation about grief that many women experience silently.
And now, ten years into comedy, she is still asking questions.
On September 5, 2026, Auntie Jemimah will mark a decade in comedy with Maitũ Mũkabete 4 at the KICC Tsavo Ballroom.
Ten years later, perhaps her greatest achievement is not that she has made us laugh.
It is that she has become comfortable enough to make us uncomfortable.
And I admire that.
Because women do not always need another person telling them what the right answer is.
Sometimes we need someone bold enough to ask:
Who taught you that?
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