My name is Tabitha Mwangi, mother of 3 children and currently programme manager at the Cambridge-Africa program at the University of Cambridge. Previously, I was senior lecturer in public health at the Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford/Cambridge, UK (2017-2020) and Pwani University in Kilifi, Kenya (2013-2015).

I have worn different hats over the years, doing various things that I have greatly enjoyed. I worked at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI-WTRP, Kilifi) for a decade, during which time, I earned my PhD in malaria epidemiology. Before then, I worked for less than a year at the now-defunct Kenya Trypanosomisais Research Institute (KETRI) –  that was about the last time I used my veterinary skills with some degree of confidence. After high school I was an untrained teacher at Ruringu Girls High School for like 3 months – stuff for a fiction story, that was.

I am a bookworm.

I remember the exact year I decided I liked books. I was always bottom of my class in lower primary school, then we moved to a rural school and at the age of 8, I was second from the top in my class. Suddenly, school and books were no longer a place of shame and I have loved both since. I guess that’s why I have been learning, reading, writing all these years and now back at uni, with books and young people.

On this blog, I write my thoughts and opinions about health issues that are troubling my country, Kenya. I  also write to explain health research findings that I find interesting.

I am a freelance science journalist with the Nation Media group. I have links to all the articles (on the page ‘Nation Media Articles’) that I have published in the Daily Nation, The East African and The Saturday Nation since I started free-lance science journalism in 2010. Most are DN2 cover stories in the Daily Nation. I have great respect for the editors at the Nation Media Group, who make a great effort to present the articles well. I am always very excited to publish in the region’s largest-selling newspapers.

I occasionally write for ‘The conversation’.

I write some non-science non-fiction and fiction once in a while – each of these have a page, one day it shall be longer than a few lines.

Leave a note for me to enjoy when you read something on this blog.

In the August-September 2021 issue of Msafiri, the Kenya Airways travel magazine, I was featured as one of ‘top 20 Kenyan bloggers you should follow’. So, my friend, you are in the right place!

Here is the article, though a clearer version can be found here: Kenya Airways Msafiri Magazine: Aug-Sept 2021