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- After using Twitter and Instagram to share satirical monologues about life under lockdown, Elsa Majimbo quickly gained comedic prominence on social media.
- In the recent past, her skits have earned her appearances on Comedy Central as well as a partnership with MAC cosmetics.
- By supplying Majimbo with sunglasses to wear in her skits, Rihanna’s Fenty is the latest to endorse the 19 year-old.
Elsa Majimbo is a journalism student at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya.
After using Twitter and Instagram to share satirical monologues about life under lockdown, Majimbo quickly gained comedic prominence on social media.
To document her time under lockdown Majimbo takes on the role of an unsparingly honest, brash and unbothered character. Shunning politeness in her monologues, the character uses humour and subtle exaggeration to illustrate her annoyance with the ways that social distancing and virtual interactions have robbed the socialising of sincerity.
“Ever since corona started we’ve been in isolation and I miss no one. Why am I missing you? There is no reason for me to be missing you. People keep on telling me “You haven’t participated in corona challenges. You haven’t joined HouseParty. You haven’t joined TikTok”. It’s not by mistake. It’s not,” she laughs before eating a mouthful of crisps.
Her skits have earned her appearances on Comedy Central as well as a partnership with MAC cosmetics.
While Majimbo’s skits often suffice without props, the most notable is a compact pair of black sunglasses. Although she told The New York Times how she bought the black shades from a street vendor outside her school in Nairobi, their of high value in her videos as they’re a repellant; worn to ward off her character’s assumed naysayers.
Then almost as if to reinforce the self-important character that Majimbo plays in her monologues, the 19-year old has received an eye-wear endorsement from Rihanna’s luxury clothing brand Fenty.
“You see me in these and you want to look me in the eye?” she says in the monologue used to announce the endorsement. “Oh na na, what’s my name? Money,” she laughs after quoting Rihanna lyrics, accessorising each sentence with a new pair of Fenty shades, which are priced somewhere between R 5 499 and R 11 999 a pair.
