Hallo William! These four boys from Eldoret are cracking ribs online

Online sensation group Propesa is tickling the social media with humorous renditions of current affairs. Buzz spoke with the comedians about how they have captured the nation’s imagination and the journey from their base in the Rift Valley

How did you all meet?

In school in Nakuru. Dennis Too went to Egerton University and he was probably the first one to set foot on Nakuru town. The rest of us were in mashinani (village). Kimutai Ruto was the second one to hit town. Too was living in a bedsitter when Ruto joined him. A year later, Wilfred Kiprono and Dennis Ruto joined them after enrolling at Rift Valley Institute of Science and Technology. You can only imagine how congested that room was, yet we all had girlfriends since we were in college!

What do you call your brand of comedy?,

“Hallo William”. Or, “Welcome Members of The Press” (laughs), because we don’t know if anyone else is doing what we do. And because we started it, we will call it “Hallo William”.

Comedians Eric Omondi and Chipukeezy do similar stuff; how is “Hallo William” different from theirs?

We come from the Rift Valley. Ours has a lot of culture in it. That’s why we have Chagets (brown jackets) in the skits and we are proud of it. We are very original, you can tell it from our accents. Most of what we do is not fully rehearsed because we want to be as authentic as possible. There are no “take twos” in our skits. We try to maintain simplicity as much as possible. That’s why we shoot using a phone. Also, what we do is usually based on current affairs.

When was the first time you realised that people were watching and following your work?

When we did “Hallo William: Matiang’i ametumalisa kapsa (Education CS Fred Matiang’i has finished us)”. We received several calls from State House and the office of the Deputy President. We were surprised that people were watching our videos, or even knew about us. We shot that clip in Nakuru on our way upcountry for Christmas and uploaded it on Facebook. A few hours after getting home, Kimutai got a call from Big Ted saying the President had watched our clip and was very happy. Kimutai almost hang up at first because he thought he was going to be arrested. That’s how we knew we had people’s attention. We get people in the streets asking us: “Can you call William for me?” Or, “where is my chaget?” A taxi guy even told us to call William “afungue jam”.

Have you met the Deputy President?

Not yet. We’ve met his people but we have not met him. Adan Duale sought us out. That was cool.

Do you think you would have been as famous had you remained in Rift Valley?

We don’t think so. To access most of the resources, you have to be in Nairobi. It’s like the whole of Kenya is centred in Nairobi. That’s why we had to move. It’s in Nairobi that we get most of the gigs which we perform in mashinani. Entertainment hasn’t been devolved.

Are you at a point where you can hold a Propesa tour?

Not yet. But we would like to go to the Boston Marathon with the likes of Ezekiel Kemboi and tell William to accompany us, of course in our chagets.

Where did you get those similar jackets?

The chagets were custom made. You can’t get chagets exactly like ours. People try to copy ours but... ours are the colour of the calabash gourd we use for mursik.

Before you went into comedy, what did you do?

We had different passions and career paths. Too studied Mass Communication, Ruto wanted to go into engineering — that’s why we call him engineer — Kimutai did IT, and I (Kiprono) did business management.

Are you paid well?

Yes we are, but you can never have enough. The reason we haven’t gone back to what we studied for is because comedy is feeding us. We are happy.

Were your parents shocked that you wanted to go into comedy?

Imagine selling all your cows for your child to go to school, and then someone shows you an online clip of him doing very silly stuff in town. You’d be disappointed, right? Of course they would have wanted us to be in suits working in offices somewhere. But they never interfered.

Are they happy now?

Very happy; they have accepted it. And they are happy when we go home with something small.

Were you confident comedy would one day work out for you?

This is something we stumbled upon. We did an audio clip for radio and people asked for more. We then realised we were sitting on something valuable. There’s a huge gap in the creative arts in Rift Valley. There are a few Kalenjin comedians like David the Student and Jemutai; they do their pieces in Kiswahili. But we started ours in Kalenjin. Some people are even shocked we can speak Kiswahili.

Why haven’t you conformed to flashy fashion like celebrities do?

Kalenjins don’t change. You will rarely know a Kalenjin has money until he spends it on you (laughs).

You seem to have had a smooth ride so far. Have there been challenges?

Just last week, someone called and said: “You guys have risen so fast, or did you join Illuminati?” We started in 2015 recording audio clips in Kalenjin. And because they were audios, we uploaded them on WhatsApp for a year. We began doing videos in 2016, still in Kalenjin. Then someone suggested that we do something in Kiswahili, or English, so that other people could understand. We have struggled — doing all this for a year without getting paid, and asking our parents to sustain us while pretending we’re in town looking for work. For a whole year we were “paid” only in emojis. As long as you have the passion, and use the resources around you, you can do it. At first we had just one smart phone. Kiprono had a Sim card and he would borrow a phone to text his girlfriend. By the time she replied, someone else had the phone. The only video we did with a professional camera is Asali and Mursik.

How old are you guys?

Kimutai is 25, Ruto 23, Kiprono 20 and Too 26.

@jmmosongo