‘WE GOT DESPERATE TO THE POINT THAT WE PRAYED TO HAVE A CERTAIN DISEASE’ KING KAKA OPENS UP ON HIS ILLNESS

Rapper Kennedy Ombima, popularly known as King Kaka opened up on his illness in a candid interview with his wife, Nana Owiti. The rapper said that he developed a severe sore throat one morning, days after returning home from a family holiday at the coast. “We had gone to Mombasa for our holiday and when we got back, I woke up with a sore throat that I could not even swallow saliva. We rushed to the nearest hospital and after a check up my sore throat was so bad. I don’t know what happened at that time because we didn’t notice, after that I got better,” he said.

King Kaka recovered but the same illness struck again with symptoms that saw him lose up to 33Kgs. “It went away and then after three weeks the sore throat appeared again and we started seeking opinions from doctor friends. Problems started when I lost taste and my skin became smooth, but what we didn’t realise was I was losing weight. I started coughing, sweating at night. I called my doctor and they told me to take specific drugs but they would ease the symptoms for a few days. The weight loss got intense and we approached a friend doctor, I went to the doctor and my weight had dropped from 85kgs to 68kgs,” King Kaka said. 

After numerous hospital trips, the rapper said he opted for tests which saw him pray for specific diseases out of desperation. “The doctor said we had to do tests. So we started with TB because of the red lips. I used to have a cup beside my bed because I used to salivate a lot and the saliva was laced with mucus. HIV negative, TB we did an ex-ray for the chest, there was a trace of pneumonia. We got desperate to the point that we prayed to have a certain disease but not cancer,” he said.  

King Kaka also explained his decision to avoid his friends and hide the disease from them during the period he was in and out of hospital. “Sometimes when I’m going through something, I always want to solve it first. I don’t want to burden people, I’m the one who people come to, I don’t go to people. Not telling people about my illness was just me being me,” he said. 

On his scary moments during his illness, King Kaka said, “Before the scary bit, there’s a day I walked to the mirror and I could not even recognise myself, I could not. The scariest bit was you, the kids and my mum, the people who were in my circle and the people who love me.”