My after 5pm: Leading personalities and their hobbies

From a Cabinet Secretary who knits to a CEO who assembles miniature cars, these individuals use their hobbies to reconnect with themselves after their day jobs have got their minds at sixes and sevens.

They thus keep looking forward to their “after 5pm” tasks.

CS Rebecca Miano’s knitting hobby

In the demanding world of public service, every day moves fast. While some days may be bliss, most will require fire-fighting. In this field, finding a moment of peace can be a challenge.

Yet, for Rebecca Miano, the Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife, her peace and serenity come through knitting, particularly, the two-needle knitting method.

“I do the two-needle knitting. I always find some time to do it. It’s very therapeutic. My love for knitting dates back to my school days. In our times, we used to have a lesson called home science. We were taught how to sew, knit, basic housekeeping, and cooking. I picked knitting as a hobby,” she says.

“From when I leave work, around 6pm or 6.30 pm, until bedtime, that’s a time when I knit. I do this especially when I’ve had a very hard day and I’m feeling stressed. It refreshes and rejuvenates my mind,” she says.

For Ms Miano, knitting is more than just a pastime, it’s a meditative practice.

“It’s intense and consuming such that you’re not thinking about other things like how your day was. In modern times, it’s difficult to just lock your mind and do one thing, but knitting gives me that pleasure,” the CS explains.

Even during long flights, she turns to her hobby.  “Knitting needles are allowed on planes, unlike other sharp objects. So when I’m travelling, I do my knitting.”

When she travels, visiting a knitting shop is always on her to-do list.

“I’m always looking for a shop where I can buy knitting yarn, the most modern patterns, and knitting needles,” she shares.

“I have a whole bucket full of my knitting equipment. Just like technology has progressed, the knitting world is also evolving. There’s even an online knitting community, almost like an app just for knitters.”

What is inside her knitting basket?

“I have about 30 balls of yarn from different destinations in different colours. Some are pure wool, some acrylic, and some synthetic. I also have printed patterns, modern pins, little scissors, and my iPad, which I use to follow YouTube tutorials,” she says.

She recently completed making a woollen scarf and is now revisiting knitting socks and booties.

“Eventually, when I’m less busy, I can make a full sweater based on the modern patterns I’ve seen. Some people even knit carpets and bed covers; it’s a whole variety. Handmade items are precious because of that personal touch, the time involved, and the emotion put into them,” she tells Lifestyle.

During her time in public service, Ms Miano says that she has picked up other hobbies.

“I enjoy the arts. I like watching live performances at the Kenya National Theatre. I also started yoga, and it’s going very well. I am also an avid reader. I read anything readable, from cabinet papers to novels. It’s good for the brain, knowledge, and information,” she says.

Dr Maxwell Okoth’s love for Lego sets

For most people, the idea of a hobby involves something simple like reading a book before bedtime, an occasional jog, or maybe a weekend puzzle.

Dr Maxwell Okoth, the founder and group managing director of the Ruai Family Hospital (RFH), his free time is devoted to a world of miniature bricks and intricate builds: Legos.

Dr Okoth’s fascination with Legos began at the age of five after his uncle introduced him to the large Lego blocks of the time.

“Those days there were large, big pieces. The idea behind it was to join bricks to make something and I found that very exciting,” he says.

Over the years, his love for Lego has evolved into a deep appreciation for the complexity and creativity it offers.

“Lego has evolved through the years, becoming more complex. Lego requires a lot of coordination. It coordinates your hands, your brain, your thoughts, and your process. When building a complex thing, if you make just one mistake, you don’t get the end product,” the 37-year-old says.

Among the various types of Lego sets available, Dr Okoth has a favourite: Lego Technic.

“I prefer Lego Technic. Lego Technic sets push the boundaries of traditional Lego by incorporating mechanical and electrical elements, often resulting in remote-controlled, functioning models. For example, this crane (proceeds to show us his fully built Lego crane). You can develop a crane that is battery-operated, and is a remote-controlled Lego,” he says. His most significant build so far is his massive crane which required days of dedication to complete.

For Dr Okoth, Lego is a challenge that fuels his competitive spirit.

“It keeps me busy, it keeps me focused. The thrill is, in what shortest time can you build this thing? Some people take a week to build it, some take a day. I’m that person who, whenever I take a challenge, I always want to conquer it.”

His determination often leads to marathon-building sessions.

“When I start, I will want to finish it. So you’ll find me doing day, night, and then the next morning, you’re done with it,” says Dr Okoth.

While he mostly enjoys Legos as a solitary hobby, he also shares the passion with his son.

“I also do it with my son because I’ve trained him. Now he’s the one who demands them more often. So, I give him a challenge. If he passes a challenge, then you reward him with a Lego, but his pieces are smaller compared to the ones I make.”

Lego sets, Dr Okoth says, can be expensive so for him it remains a reward rather than a routine purchase.

“I buy them as a gift to myself when I want to reward myself because they’re also not cheap, so you can’t do it every day,” he says.

He often picks up new sets while travelling.

“I mostly buy them when I travel outside the country as they are much cheaper out there. One thing I would wish is that LEGO can design a Lego version of the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) for us one day. This would not only be relatable but be a marketing strategy for our country. This would mean that we would have KICC all over the world; with people showcasing them in their houses. Lego has a huge community,” he says.

As his collection grows, so does his appreciation for the discipline Lego instils.

“You must coordinate the manual, follow the manual as it is. Sometimes if you don’t follow the direction, the pieces, and you do the opposite, you will reach somewhere and realise you’ve done it all wrong and you have to go back. That means you take much more time.”

His creations are scattered throughout his home. In his living room, he has a completed set of the White House, the Burj Khalifa, safely stored in his home office is his Lego Defender that he recently completed.

With the time that he spends working on his hobby, his Lego collections are some of his most prized possessions—so much so that everyone in his family knows better than to play near the displayed Lego set.

“My daughter is three years old and even she understands how important my Lego set is to me. Even when we have play dates, I often overhear her telling her friends that touching the Lego sets is wrong,” he says.

However, he admits that some of his creations have suffered minor damages.

“This crane has suffered a bit of torture over time, so it’s not the way it used to be. I think I’ve also been very busy lately; so I’ve not had time to try and correct it,” he says.

The cost of Lego sets varies widely, with some priced as low as Sh7,000 and as high as Sh90,000.

Nevertheless, for Dr Okoth, the value extends beyond the price tag.

“It’s like somebody who goes to the bar calculating how much they’ve spent on alcohol over the years of life. So, I don’t quantify the cost but only get them when I have some money to spare,” he says.

Beyond being a hobby, Lego has shaped the kind of leader that he is and his approach to problem-solving.

“Lego has taught me that life must have a map and you must be structured to come up with a result. If you’re not structured, then you may find yourself just being all over.”

Looking ahead, Dr Okoth hopes to build even larger, more complex models, though he acknowledges that Lego can be an addictive pursuit.

“It can easily turn into addiction if you’re not careful. That’s a problem. So, I also need to manage it,” he says.

Dr Nicodemus Minde and his scrapbooking passion

When you are done reading a newspaper, you probably stack it somewhere and never interact with it again.

Not so much for Dr Nicodemus Minde, a researcher and an academic.

He reads newspapers with a keen interest and tries to build associations between what he has read now and what he has consumed before. When he spots an article of interest, he cuts it and stores it.  That cutting may eventually be pasted into a scrapbook.

Dr Minde filled around 15 scrapbooks with newspaper cuttings last year. Why, you ask? There was a lot to document for future reference.

He has at least two scrapbooks full of newspaper cuttings relating to the youth-led protests that began in June 2024—photos, articles, cartoons, name it.

He also has scrapbooks containing published material about the impeachment of Rigathi Gachagua from his Deputy President position.

Remember the death of Mwai Kibaki?

He selected some articles written then and now they are in a scrapbook in his house. The same applies to the demise Daniel arap Moi, John Magufuli, among others. Each of such figures commands his or her own scrapbook.

He is also assembling articles about former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s bid to be the next chairperson of the Africa Union Commission.

“There is no monetary value at all. It’s just an interest; trying to understand the geopolitics of the region,” he says.

“The scrapbook also helps me to historicise some of these events.”  

When his day is done with his engagement as a researcher with the International Institute for Security Studies and at the United States International University-Africa (where he teaches international relations), he will be reading newspapers.

“Every evening, I read newspapers,” he says. “I buy newspapers and collect them.”

When something captures his attention, he will cut it from the paper for later review. When he sees something developing, he will consider opening a scrapbook for it.

“I try to create a narrative or a storyline that will eventually lead to some form of visualisation that will later come to mean something,” he says.

“I don’t cut and then paste immediately. I cut then collect them then make sense of what I’ve collected. And then I get a (new) scrapbook, then put the first story on it and then the second and the third so that I can make a sequence” he adds.

“And then eventually, I forget about it for a while.”

Dr Minde is originally from Arusha, Tanzania. He moved to Kenya in 1995. When he was a student at Lukenya Schools – where he did his primary and secondary school – he started his first scrapbooking project on a counter book with its stiff black covers and all. It is filled with cuttings of personalities he admired back in the day, and a former Miss Tanzania and musician Ray C are among them.

He still has his first scrapbook among the numerous others he has created since.

Lately, he has bought factory-made scrapbooks, which have stronger leaves, for his hobby.

At Lukenya Schools, he had an interaction with the founder — Justice Kasanga Mulwa who died in 2015.

“I went to his office and he had this collection of newspapers and magazines. He was very well-read. I found that to be quite intriguing. So, he gave me most of his old magazines,” he says.

“It shaped my collection.”

He likes going through his scrapbooks over the weekend or when he is free.

“I just go back and reread most of the things that are there. Like when I went home for Christmas, I carried one bunch,” he says.

“I just wanted to make sense of what happened. And I learnt a lot.”

“I’m also realising that because of social media and the noise, sometimes we don’t take time to have a deeper reflection on what happened.”

He notes that the scrapbooks come to life when he opens them with a friend or with his students.

“This is something that I feel is a good pastime for me. It relaxes me; it gives me some form of satisfaction. When visitors come, I can share with them, especially those who want to take a keen interest,” says Dr Minde.

Besides scrapbooking, he also collects postcards.

Deepesh Jha and the joy of miniature life-like cars

Would you find it odd to encounter a 50-year-old man who enjoys assembling and driving miniature vehicles using a remote control?

Then you would find Deepesh Jha odd. Odd, until you realise how his love for replicas of off-road vehicles helps him relieve stress.

For Mr Jha, a seasoned advertising professional and the chief creative officer of the Partnership Africa Publicis, his love for scale crawlers provides the perfect balance between creativity and technical precision.

His possessions aren’t just toy cars; they are painstakingly detailed, functional replicas of real off-road vehicles. They occupy both his imagination and his weekends.

At his home in Nairobi, Mr Jha has transformed his garage into a personal workshop. The workshop has two seats. One is his and the other belongs to his son whom he says has picked up on his hobby.

“This room was designed by my wife as a birthday gift,” he says.

His passion that he tries to work on every weekend transfers him to a world of small parts, precision tools, and patience.

“Scale crawling is a hobby that has gained popularity mostly in the West. Crawling has been a source of relaxation, creativity, and fulfilment for over two decades for me. I think the beauty about hobbies is that they keep you occupied,” Mr Jha says.

How does he go about getting the spare parts? Research, he says.

“If you buy all of it in one go, even the joy of building it goes. You have to research, find the best parts, and then slowly build your car,” says Mr Jha, who buys from foreign shops.

His journey into scale crawling began as an extension of his lifelong curiosity about how things work. As a child, he was notorious for dismantling gadgets at home, a habit that led his parents to think twice before showing him anything new.

“I was not afraid to take things apart and put them back. I enjoyed that process. It gives you confidence to do things yourself,” he says.

Mr Jha remembers that his first build was 20 years ago when he made a Frankenstein car which was a hybrid of parts from multiple cars.

“It was an experiment. I didn’t have a kit or anything. So, when one broke down, I took it apart and merged it with another. That’s when I stumbled upon the world of crawling and realised this was an entire hobby.”

His interest evolved over the years, moving from boats and ships to scale-model vehicles, with an emphasis on off-road trucks like Range Rover Defenders and Land Cruisers.

In his workshop today, he has an array of miniature armoured vehicles, cranes, and even boats.

The joy of scale crawling isn’t just about playing with a remote-controlled car but it’s also about the art of creation.

“Building scale toys involves working with my hands. I love that challenge, the idea of being able to create something from scratch. When you see that final product, you know it’s yours; not something bought off the shelf.”

Beyond the craftsmanship, crawling also serves as a means of stress relief.

“There’s a Zen philosophy that says a man should do three things: work at a job he loves, marry a woman he loves, and have a hobby he loves. The job won’t love you back every day, and neither will the woman. That’s why you need a hobby. It keeps you going.”

His hobby, he says, isn’t just about making the cars move; it’s about mastering terrain.

“Crawling emphasises slow, controlled manoeuvres over rocks, slopes, and obstacles. It’s like a miniature version of the Rhino Charge,” he says, referring to Kenya’s famous off-road motorsport event.

“You have to angle it properly, control the pace, it’s all about skill.”

Mr Jha takes his crawlers out to Karura Forest and Magadi where, he says, he gets a large space to see his creations on the move.

The attention to detail is what makes his collection so lifelike. When he takes out his Defender for a test run in his compound from a distance, it looks like the real thing. It is only when it gets closer to you that you realise it is a miniature version of the real-life Defender.

Whenever he travels, Mr Jha takes time to look for some of the parts that he couldn’t purchase online.

“When I travel, I look for accessories that match my models. In Thailand, I once spent half a day tracking down a specific type of silicon oil and shock absorbers. In Amsterdam, I hunted for tyres that were exact replicas of Defender tyres,” the 50-year-old shares.

As fulfilling as it is, scale crawling isn’t the cheapest of hobbies.

“Compared to building real cars, it’s not expensive, but it’s not cheap either. A good crawler can start at $400 (Sh51,000), but by the time you finish customising it, you might have spent anywhere between $1,600 (Sh206,000) to $2,000 (Sh258,000). Now my wife knows! I always told her it was $160 (Sh20,000),” he admits.

Beyond personal satisfaction, Mr Jha finds that his hobby has influenced his leadership style.

“One of the most important things in leadership is to be hands-on. If something is truly difficult, sometimes you have to do the job yourself. That’s how you earn respect. Otherwise, you’re just a boss, not a leader.”

His pride is that his son is also picking up his passion for scale crawling.

“From a young age, he understood the difference between remote toys and crawlers. Once, he even explained to his friend why he couldn’t play with them, ‘This is a crawler and this is a toy. The toy you can break but this crawler you can’t.’”

Despite a demanding career, he remains committed to his hobby.

“I don’t do my building as often as before as we are still trying to build the company but I still try to make time. Weekends are for father-son crawling sessions in Karura Forest. It’s not just about driving; it’s about cleaning and maintaining them afterwards, teaching him discipline. ”

Looking ahead, he dreams of scaling up in the literal sense.

“The ultimate goal for me is to build a real-life Defender and create a miniature version of it. Maybe even get into planes next,” he says.

Dr Andrew Odhiambo, cancer doctor who deejays for fun

During business hours when he is tackling concepts like immunotherapy, paracentesis, biopsy and the likes, his name is Dr Andrew Odhiambo, a physician and medical oncologist.

But when he is decompressing from the high-pressure job, where sometimes he has to break the news that a patient doesn’t have many days in this world, he is DJ Dr Drew.

At that time, he is dealing with matters like song transitions, choruses, and all that jazz. He is the doctor who deejays to keep sane.

Dr Odhiambo works at the Kenyatta National Hospital and runs his clinic at Nairobi Hospital. He sees patients at Kenyatta, Nairobi Hospital and even sometimes Coptic Hospital. He specialises in gastrointestinal cancers. Medicine is his bread, and music is something of butter.

He grew up as a big fan of music, and that passion somehow translated into being a deejay from the time he experimented with computer-based deejaying software.

“What also helped me navigate this is I had very early exposure to technology. My dad is an IT person. So, we’ve grown up with computers in our house from when I was a child. So, it was easy to find music, record it, replay it, listen to it, understand it,” he says.

He remembers tuning to Metro FM as a young boy growing up and calling the station to dedicate songs to friends. He also recalls watching with keen interest the music programmes that ran on KTN every evening.

“I’ve loved music from since I was a child. I used to spend time recording music from the radio station. I take my dad’s Luo audio tapes then I record on top of them, then I get beaten. But I have always liked music. I remember my first Discman; I remember my first album I bought for Biggie (Notorious BIG),” he says.

The alumnus of Moi Forces Academy was relying on computer-based deejaying mechanisms until his wife bought him a mixer for his 39th birthday.

“It was a pleasant surprise. So, now I had a mixer. I started practising, going to YouTube, looking at the videos, looking at the tutorials, just learning how to understand the mix. That’s how I got to give more respect to deejays because their work isn’t easy. As the DJ keeps the crowd entertained, he has already thought about the next two songs. He doesn’t even have time to enjoy the song,” says Dr Odhiambo.

For the longest, he says, people have known him as the music guy. When he goes to doctors’ conferences or even in his estate, he is the go-to person when someone wants music played.

“Any time that we’re having an estate party or any ‘bash’ in the estate, I’m always the music guy,” he says.

“I just grew up being the guy who always had the music, and that has remained up to now. Even when we go for our medical conferences in Mombasa, Kisumu and wherever, I carry my laptop, my iPad, my speakers, my everything, and I’m just a guy with the music.”

He is mostly into older music released before 2010.

“Any song that’s after 2010, I struggle with it,” he says. “Anything after 2010, I don’t consider it to be old school. But I’ll still listen to it. I mean, I appreciate all types of music. So, in my car, I always have good music. I like having good music everywhere, all the time.”

When he has free time in the evenings, he is likely to choose staying indoors to play his music over going out.

“Sometimes I just on put my noise-cancelling earphones, because I don’t want to wake up the children, and I just experiment on my own, sometimes very late into the night. Sometimes my wife is there supporting me, but from time to time I will just play by myself in the house,” he says.

Dr Odhiambo studied medicine at the University of Nairobi and got his post-master’s education in the United Kingdom. He counts on music – and deejaying – as one of the ways to relax.

“It kind of helps me because my job is very stressful. We deal with highly emotional situations or very sick patients. For some of them, you know they’re not going to survive for long. You have to break bad news so very often. Patients cling on to your emotions. They consume all the energy you have. You just have to be there for them and so, psychologically, that can weigh anybody down,” he says.

“So, as an oncologist, you have to have ways of coping, be it therapy, be it sports, be it a hobby. It can be a mixture of things. So, for me, amongst many of the things that I do to de-stress is playing the music, mixing the music, listening to the music. And that is very soothing and it kind of reflects on my personality about uncertainty. In oncology, every day something will be different,” he adds.

To those in the medical field, he says there is a need to have a way of getting away from it all.

“Sometimes the system can consume you and you can get burnout. One of the things that I’ve recently kind of downed is to slow down a bit on private practice, because if you don’t slow down, you’ll just work from January to December. So, sometimes you just have to say no to work and do something else: dedicate that time to family, to hobbies, to reflection, to building positivity in your mind,” he says.

“Right now, even the medical students are really trying to do other things outside books: sporting activities, cultural activities, and many things just to delink or not to be consumed by always reading. So, I think it’s a very important thing. It’s unfortunate that students are turning to suicide during these tough times.”

He contends that he is still an amateur on matters deejaying, and that he is being trained by one DJ Dubb among others. Also, he doesn’t plan to go playing in commercial set-ups.

“I’m not aiming to be pro or anything, or to mix in clubs and whatever and whatever, but just to be an entertainer. So, maybe if there’s a small gathering, it can be a family gathering or whatever, (I can play music),” he says.

To keep abreast with the latest music, Dr Odhiambo, 40, checks out TikTok challenges and also watches music events like the BET Awards.

[email protected]; [email protected]