Nairobi News

Bubbly and charming Dr Zippora Agath Okoth, or simply Dr. Zippy, is a WIFA award-winning actress and filmmaker, A French African Young Leaders Program laureate, and a Senior lecturer at KCA University.

I have done six one-woman stage shows and produced and directed 11 films. I am also the winner of Best Solo Performance by a Woman during KITFEST 2023, Best Director WIFA 2022, and Winner of Spotlight on Kenya Music 2006.

I am an artivist, and my work focuses on changing the African narrative with a strong focus on women’s issues, evident in my one-woman shows and films.

In am a country girl. I grew up in Homabay all my life.

When I plan on executing a project on my vision board, I never plan with the money already at hand. When I bought my plot in Kajiado County, where I built my four-bedroom home, I only had Sh150,000 with me. That’s what I started with. The plot cost me Sh1.2 million.

I love hosting people at my home. I love hosting to a fault; hosting kind of gives me an adrenaline rush.

Oops Zippy! The Diary of a Divorced Woman is a book I wrote in 2019 which is about my married life and divorce.

Before I made it to a book, it was a play I did in 2018, and people would ask me to do it again (the play), but because it’s one of those things that are not easy to do again, it’s like reliving those moments again. So,o I decided to turn it into a book.

I went through my divorce in December 2012 after enduring five years id physical abuse, emotional torment, and infidelity.

Because of the divorce, I faced a lot of societal stigma. When I left, I was 30, and so I was told that I wouldn’t find another man. Someone told me, ‘Go back to your husband, there is no better man. They are all the same. You think you are special.

I wanted my marriage to work. I tried my best to make that happen. When I left the marriage, cheating wasn’t the last stroke that broke the camel’s back, but the disrespect, the physical abuse.

In my stories, I do not flower divorce, I tell people it’s hard, its death, its not easy. It took me ten years to heal.

Some people call me after reading my book, and after listening to them, I tell them I think they should stay and not go the divorce way. Maybe take a break, and then there are those who I listen to and I tell them, leave now before you die.

If I ever get a chance again, I would love to be married again, even if it’s 10 times if I have to. I love marriage, but there are boundaries to it now.

People now say my standards are too high and what have you, but no, the standards were never that high then, and where did that take us?

Right now, I just value myself more. I know what I have gone through. I want better, and I think I deserve that.