- Eve Mungai is a pioneer YouTuber who has paved the way for other creatives.
- The 23 year media personality (born 6 April 2000) has a bagged a number of deals making her one of the most bankable celebrities.
Creatives are finding ingenious ways of making a living away from the traditional media. Social media platforms and YouTube have given talented Kenyans an avenue to showcase their art and make money while at it. Eve Mungai is one such creative-whose interviewing skills are unmatched. Her YouTube channel has grown to become one of the most watched in the country.
In a past interview, Eve revealed she makes upto Ksh1.5 million on a good month.
Background
She was born Evelyn Wanjiku Mungai in Gachiku village, Murang’a county on 6th April 2000. Her life growing up was pretty much smooth until she was in Grade five when her mother suddenly became very sick.
She required two surgeries and a lot of money went into paying the hospital bills. Today, she is doing well and she says both her parents are very supportive.
Education
After successfully completing primary school, she proceeded to a local high school. However, due to problems with school fees, she had to change schools severally.
While she did not love school that much, she was always a leader and loved poetry and talking in front of an audience. Her father really wanted her to be a teacher but this was not something she saw herself doing.
One of her teachers noticed her public speaking skills and thought she’d make a very good journalist. Upon completing high school, she enrolled for a journalism course but dropped out after one semester. She has plans to go back to school in the future.
Career
After quitting college, she needed to secure a job to sustain herself. She opened her YouTube channel on 21st January 2020 and posted her first video on 31st October 2020. This was a video of her covering the Machakos Gengeton Festival and later did videos where she randomly asked people their opinions on trending topics.
On December 2020, she would meet with three struggling musicians named Madocho, Stupid Boy and Liyetin. She ended up covering their story and was responsible for getting people to notice the trio. The publicity helped them get Vagah of Afro royalties to sponsor their music.
Little by little, the celebrity continued growing and has progressed to doing a number of interviews on her channel. She has featured A-list celebrities on her channel and upcoming ones like Ndovu kuu and Mejja. She is also the one who introduced Manzi wa Kibera to the Kenyan audience.
It has been less than a year since she started posting videos on her channel and the growth has been rapid. At times, she posts up to four videos per day, proving that persistence and hard work indeed pays. She currently has more than 730,000 subscribers, over 2,000 videos and million of views.
Interestingly, she uses her phone to shoot the videos. Initially she used a Nikon camera but the risks of using it in the ghettos was risky. Eve is famed for her simple camera.
Boyfriend
Mungai was in a relationship with her director Trevor who is also doubled as her photographer. The two had been together for the past three years. It was Trevor who inspired her to start her YouTube channel and he is in charge of marketing at Eve Mungai media.
Trevor’s wealth of experience proved useful in the fast rise of Mungai’s career. Speaking to Afrikan Traveller, Eve’s ex-boyfriend narrated how he created content for a person he worked for and took his YouTube video from zero to over 20,000 subscribers without pay for two years. His efforts paid off and he was put on a salary after his employer secured sponsors.
According to Trevor, his new employer started spiting him prompting him to team up with his girlfriend to start their new YouTube channel. The first video was a hit attracting over 1000 new subscribers.
His employer was miffed by this development. He told Trevor to delete the videos if he wanted his salary. Eve, who had dropped out of school and was jobless, told his boyfriend to forget the salary and they concentrate on their channel.
They had to sell one of their cameras to settle their rent.
Break-Up
Their fairytale like relationship came to a sad end when Trevor announced they had separated from February 2023.
According to Director Trevor, they kept it a secret since they were still working together. He went on to state that he had fired Eve and “her services are no longer needed”.
