The Diploma Fanne Mwambi Refused to Leave Behind

By Mary Wavinya,

At first glance, Fanne Nyamwamu Mwambi could easily pass for any other mother returning to school. But beneath the responsibilities of motherhood, marriage and a career in media is a woman finishing a journey she started nearly two decades ago.

She first walked through the gates of the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication in 2008, young, ambitious and determined to become a journalist. Nearly twenty years later, she returned through the same gates, this time carrying years of experience, a family and one unfinished dream.

What made her come back?

After high school, however, university was not an option. Fanne enrolled at NIBS for a diploma in Journalism and eventually became one of the best students in her class. Completing the course, though, did not guarantee her the qualification. Her father did not pay for her external examination fees. This disappointment led to her making a promise to herself.

“I swore never to rely on another man for support and promised myself to return and complete this,” she says with eyes fierce and full of determination.

Fanne’s relationship with journalism had began long before KIMC. In high school, she wrote her first novel and discovered that writing gave her a place to express herself despite being shy. English was one of her strongest subjects, and some of her compositions were later used as training material after she left school. Journalism felt like a natural fit.

At about 20, Fanne was already working as a salesperson at a local bank. She was earning, but not enough to easily finance the education she wanted. Instead of abandoning journalism, she looked for another route. That route led her to KIMC.

Getting admitted was not easy. She contacted her old friend, Abel Mutua, who was already a student at the institution. Abel advised her to submit both a physical and hand-delivered application. She followed his advice and was admitted for a Diploma in Broadcast Journalism.

For Fanne, this was a second chance, but still there was one problem. Money. She was working while studying, hoping to support herself. Then she was transferred to a workplace outside the CBD, making it increasingly difficult to balance work, school and survival. She eventually had to choose work.

“I was at the top of my class there, and felt like I was a failure for not achieving this qualification,” she recalls, her eyes watery. “I wanted more, I wanted better, I knew I deserved better than what I had.”

Leaving KIMC did not mean leaving journalism. Instead, Fanne threw herself into work and slowly built a career without the academic papers she had once believed were necessary to validate her ambitions.

The Magical Day of Love

By her early twenties, she was ready to settle down. She married a man she describes as her best friend, someone she had known since she was 19.

“He didn’t give me all the solutions I needed, but he got my mind to a place where I could think clearly,” she says.

In 2009, the couple welcomed their first daughter. Motherhood, however, did not silence Fanne’s ambitions. When her daughter was a year old, she started a parenting blog while working as a customer service agent at Airtel Kenya. The blog opened an unexpected door when she was introduced to the then Managing Editor of the People Daily newspaper, Maina Muiruri, who was looking for a writer to take up a parenting column.

For six months, she wrote without pay, but eventually the persistence paid off. She earned the column, Mum in The Mix, and began establishing herself in mainstream media.

Then came December 12, 2012.

Fanne married her best friend on 12.12.12, a date she describes as a magical day of love. Her wedding was published by her colleagues at People Daily and later featured by Weddings Kenya. The publicity eventually earned her a feature in the Standard newspaper. For Fanne, the attention meant more than wedding publicity.

“I felt noticed, I felt there was something special in me worth working for and I knew the media was my place,” she says.

Two more daughters followed in 2013 and 2018, while her career continued to grow. She moved from writing into editing, gaining the professional experience she had always wanted. But something was still missing.

“My dream was not dead,” she says, “I was growing. I only lacked the papers to defend my experience.”

For years, the diploma remained somewhere at the back of her mind.

Then, in 2024, her eldest daughter joined high school. It was at this moment when Fanne thought about the example she wanted to set for her children. She had already built a career, but she knew there was one part of her story she had never finished. She tried to reclaim her old KIMC application and even wrote a letter explaining why she had left.

There was no response.

Then one evening in April 2024, while browsing her e-Citizen account, she noticed that KIMC was accepting applications and she applied. A few days later, she received a text asking her to report to school the following Monday.

Her first thought was that it was probably a scam.

Still, she gathered her documents and went to the South B campus. The admissions were real, and she was therefore given a new student identification card and a new admission number. After years of imagining the moment, Fanne was a KIMC student again.

“It was a mix of joy and disbelief,” she recalls, “I just wanted to go home, soak it all in and then start over.”

The woman who returned was very different from the young woman who had left. She was now a mother of three, a wife, an experienced media professional and a woman who had learned that ambition had to fit alongside responsibility.

Her career choices reflected that lesson. After customer service, she joined a PR firm in 2011 as head of administration and research. Although the job was comfortable, the distance from home made family life difficult.

By 2019, following her father’s passing away, she left formal employment to help her mother run a growing school. The arrangement also allowed her to remain close to her daughters while still pursuing her own dreams.

Just as she was settling into her return to school, life surprised her again. In February 2026, Fanne discovered she was pregnant. The timing was far from what she had planned. She was already deep into her studies, facing assignments, projects and examinations, with the third and final year ahead of her.

“Part of me was angry, another part was happy. It was a good blessing, but why now?” she says.

She spoke to her Head of Department, who helped her understand how she could navigate school while managing the pregnancy. There was a way forward. So she kept going.

Perhaps being unprepared is something Fanne has learned to live with. Her journey has rarely followed the plan. She once left school because life demanded work. She built a career without the papers she wanted. She became a wife and mother while pursuing journalism. Years later, she returned to the institution she had once left behind, and now she is completing that journey while preparing to welcome another child.

For Fanne, the diploma is therefore more than a certificate. It represents a promise she made to herself years ago.

The young woman who first entered KIMC had a dream but lacked the resources to protect it. The woman who returned came with experience, responsibilities and a much clearer understanding of what that dream meant to her.

She knows now that dreams do not always move in straight lines, they could sometimes pause, take detours or even lead you back to where you started. Fanne is still attending classes, completing assignments and preparing for the next chapter of her life, but this time with the intention of seeing the journey through.

When she eventually walks out of KIMC with her diploma, she will not simply be graduating from a course. She will be finishing a story that began nearly two decades ago. The young woman who once walked through those gates with an unfinished dream will finally walk out knowing she did not leave it behind.