Parental guidance
How Namulanta Kombo’s idea of writing a letter to her daughter became a global hit podcast
BBC
- Anna Jones
Dear Daughter: Stars is available to listen to on BBC Sounds. Add it to your collection
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Back in 2021, Namulanta Kombo was working in the development sector of her home country of Kenya and a mother of two children (now eight and four), when she heard the BBC World Service promote a competition for fresh ideas for podcasts from people with no broadcast experience. She’d never won anything before apart from small trinkets in lucky dips and so, with little hope but plenty of enthusiasm, she submitted her idea for a series based upon a very personal project: building a “handbook for life” for her daughter from letters she wrote to her.
A year later and Kombo’s show, Dear Daughter, picked up prizes for Best Family Podcast and Podcast of the Year at the 2022 British Podcast Awards, with the judges stating that this was “an excellent example of how one simple idea can have such universal appeal… such a powerful, emotional and creative listen.”
Not bad going for a novice and Kombo is the first to acknowledge how extraordinary this rapid career trajectory has been. “It was a huge change in my life, but I was ready to make space for this opportunity because I really, really wanted it, most of all for my daughter.”
In essence, Dear Daughter invites guests to read out a letter they have written to their daughter, son, or important young person in their lives. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but the aim is to share the experiences and advice that they would like to pass on. This has included a widower navigating solo parenting, a mother fleeing genocide in Rwanda and some top tips from a young cousin on the peer-pressure perils of buying a cheap thong.
It doesn’t have to be a life-changing or momentous event to pass muster. In fact, the key to Dear Daughter’s global success has been its relatable content. “There are so many stories, so many experiences. People are living very similar lives, just in different contexts and countries,” Kombo explains.
It's a tragedy, to not know key things about your mother
The latest series marks something of a shift. All the letters come from individuals who are “stars” in their fields, such as Bridgerton actress Adjoa Andoh, Australian footballer and captain of West Ham United’s women’s team Katrina Gorry and the award-winning Lebanese journalist Baria Alamuddin (who also happens to be George Clooney’s mother-in-law).
It’s not the first time that Kombo has interviewed celebrity guests. TV cook Nadiya Hussain appeared last year with a letter she’d written to her 13-year-old daughter on how not to let the world hold her back. And the writer Isabel Allende read out a poignant letter to her daughter in 2023 and spoke of letter-writing as “an art that is being lost”. Kombo agrees with this sentiment, to a certain degree. “On paper I feel like I’m able to let my words flow easier. A lot more emotion goes into it. I have never edited a letter. I’ve never had to. Can you believe it? I’ve never had to go back, cross something out and rewrite it. I will stop writing at the end of a page or two. It’s cathartic.”
Kombo acknowledges that an element of fear as a new mother lay behind her first deciding to write to her daughter: what if she were to die before her child grew up? As a novice podcast host, she had to confront this head on in the very first programme when she spoke with an American woman whose mother had died when she was young. “She had very little information. That’s such a tragedy, to not know some key things. Women are custodians of their children’s childhoods.”
Does this mean that men or other relatives or even family friends are not up to the job? Does it always have to be a mother-daughter thing? “Not at all,” she says. “They are as much a part of their childhood. It’s a collaborative thing. It’s important for my children to have a full picture of who they were when they look back, but also to feel valued for who they are right now. So, I ask everyone to contribute to that.”
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Time to take out that pen and get writing…
Authors
Anna Jones
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