Sheghu: The Rise And Rise Of Kenya’s Female Rally Driver

Pauline Sheghu, one of Kenya’s top female rally shares insights into her media career and later rallying passion which has seen her compete in World Rally Championships (WRC) and other motorsport competitions.

Pauline was born in 1977 in Nairobi but her parents hail from Taita Taveta. She says her father was a police officer, therefore moving from one place to another as a result of his transfers was common. However they ended up in Kisumu where she says her mother settled in order to allow them to study seamlessly. She began her studies in Kisumu in 1980s and later ended in Nairobi after completing Form Four in 1995.

She describes her parents as disciplinarians who shaped her to stay strong and focused in life, something that later proved vital in her rallying career.

“I was brought up in a very disciplined family. My father being a police officer and my mother kept us disciplined. My father used to be transferred from one place to another and that is why we ended up in Kisumu when my mother decided to settle there,” Pauline recalls.

Hawking sodas

Pauline says after secondary education, she wasn’t sure of a course to pursue but she is grateful that the time she spent out of school after KCSE proved vital as it gave her a path to follow. That path, surprisingly, wasn’t rallying or anything close to Motorsport but journalism.

Before joining college to pursue her journalism career, she says she helped her mother in business, where she worked as a hawker for close to two years in search of money to fund her higher education.

“I stayed at home for about two years because my parents had no money to take me to college. I attended short secretarial courses since my mother wanted to keep me busy after school,” she says.

She continues: “Back then I did not know what I wanted to do. But whenever I watched the news, I felt that would be a good course to do. I loved watching news anchors and news reporters and they really inspired me and that is when I chose journalism as my career path.”

The mother of one says working with her mother in the business hardened her for what was coming. She shares that the lessons from street business taught her that nothing comes for free, only through hard work.

“I was helping my mother with business. I was hawking sodas in the late 1990s. That experience really hardened me and taught me great lessons. We saved the profits from the business and we used it to pay my college fees,” she says.

After the cumbersome work of hawking sodas in Kisumu, Pauline got a chance to join Kenya Institute Mass Communication to pursue journalism. That is how she returned to live in Nairobi after many years in Kisumu.

Dream come true

Having been hardened in business life, Pauline set her focus in journalism and couldn’t settle for less. While at college she says she used to go to Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) in the late 90s to see if she could find reporters to mentor her. Luckily, she met one who helped her to join KBC as an attachee. She says she learned the ropes of journalism very fast and later she was hired at KBC where she worked for 10 years.

Getting employed was a dream come true to her. However, fate had other plans. She says while she was busy working with her scripts in the newsroom, a sports reporter came to her asking her to join them in an inter-media competition held in 2006.

She says the competition was held in Jamhuri Gardens. At first, she said she was not interested at all. In fact, the conveners of the competition required each team to have at least one female driver in the team. So naturally, she chose to join the team to prevent the KBC team from being disqualified for having no female driver with them.

“Every media house was required to come up with a team and there must be a lady on the team. I was not interested. I just joined as a way of helping KBC to enter the competition. Back then I was thinking that motorsports is male-dominated and tough sport,” she recalls.

Love at first sight

When Pauline finally entered the competition that weekend, she fell in love with the sport. She says the moment she turned-on the engine of the rally car, a rush of adrenaline took over her. She describes her entry to it as ‘love at first sight’.

She says that competition went on each weekend which gave her more experience each time she competed until one day, Kenya Motorsports Federation (KMSF) came to the competition in search of rally drivers to compete in Kenya National Rally Championship (KNRC) which was held in Kajiado.

“I continued to compete in inter-media rally competitions until KMSF came to select a team to compete at KNRC. We were 62 in the competition and only two people would be selected for the KNRC. I became number one in that rally and made it to KNRC in Kajiado which was sponsored by KCB Bank,” she says.

In the Kajiado rally Pauline became the first female driver to complete the championship putting her name in the top 20 rally drivers that year and solidifying her position in the sport.

“In rally the most important thing is to finish on the podium. I was among the top 20 and became the first lady to complete the three day rally event and make it to the podium,” she says.

While Motorsport is known as a male dominated sport, Pauline says it’s a stereotype that has made many women avoid it. For her, it’s men who are in Motorsport who helped her to scale the heights of the sport.

She says until one ventures into the sport, one shouldn’t dismiss it as a male-only sport. For her, teamwork in the sport has proven vital in her rally races.

In the 2023 WRC in Naivasha she was navigated by Linet Ayuko, a navigator whom she describes as “an angel” for her excellent work which enabled her to complete the Naivasha rally becoming the only female driver to complete the rally course which spans for more than 1000 kilometers.

Eyeing 2025 World Rally Championship

Despite the challenges that come with competing in motorsport including lack of sponsorship, Pauline is optimistic that more women will join the sport. She says the narrative that motorsport is for men only has changed and that more women are gearing up for it. She is preparing for the 2025 World Rally Championship, where she is appealing for sponsors to enable her to put Kenya in the global map.

“The biggest challenge in motorsport is sponsorship. If women get more sponsorships, we can do very well because motorsport is extremely expensive. However, it has made Kenya well-known because the WRC held in Kenya is the most watched in the world. With that, my hope is to see more women participating,” Pauline says.