Former Citizen TV Journalist Purity Mwambia has broken silence after it emerged that he was on the verge of being homeless after being abandoned in US.
Through a post on her Facebook account, the investigative journalist said that she is carrying her career cross in the foreign land but her employer if fully supporting her.
“On Tuesday, I made remarks at the State Department forum in Washington DC, narrating my experience with a human rights group; experiences very well known to that group, just note I continue carrying my cross proudly with the total support of my employer back at home,” she captioned a photo that was taken during the forum.
The journalist recently went viral after she revealed that she was abandoned in US and did not know what to do next.
Th investigative journalist made the revelation during the forum that was organized to discuss challenges that women in journalism face.
One of the matters of discussion was female journalists who had been forced to exile because of their work. In her contribution, Purity Mwambia noted that she hadn’t achieved much in her career, and just like the rest who have gone through the experience it was like her voice had been silenced.
“Thank you for this opportunity. My challenges are not very different from other investigative journalists in exile. First of all, when you come here from your country where you’ve done big stories, you’ve quoted all these people who are doing some corruption, big shots in the government… but believe me, when you come here, it’s like your voice is silenced. It’s hard to navigate the US media landscape, especially for global journalists. It’s so hard. I’ve been here for two years and I’ve only been able to do one story with one of the local companies,” she said.
She further said that she was facilitated to exile by an organization which had since left her there.
“Some who come here say it is like the American dream but has its own challenges. You find yourself in a place where there is no one to talk to, no one to run to. Personally, I was brought here by an organization and they abandoned me. They left me, I’m on the verge of homelessness because I don’t know what to do next. Every day when I walk past all these metro buses and I see these homeless people. It’s one of those stories I would have loved to tell as a journalist, but now I walk as if I’m literally in their shoes, not knowing what’s going to happen to me,” Purity Mwambia said.
The journalist was forced to exile after her investigative story, Guns Galore, was aired in April 2021 on Citizen TV. She was forced to leave the country after receiving death threats.
In her expose, Mwambia detailed how police officers rented their guns, uniforms, handcuffs and bullets to criminals to commit crime.