Meet David Jomeli, engineer with a knack for rapping

His hand gestures resemble those of American rap mogul 50 Cent, a subtle indication of the influence hip hop music on him.

He has two rap albums under his belt, with 32 songs to his name, produced both in Kenya and in Germany, and has five music videos.

He once curtain raised for American rap group Lost Boys when they came to Kenya and in Mombasa.

However, Jomeli Malidadi is not your ordinary music artiste. Born David Jomeli, the civil-structural engineer has many gifts and can rap, draw caricatures and design buildings with the precision of vernier callipers.

The nickname Malidadi was given to him back in college because of his organisational skills.

“I would arrange things and make them look lovely in a design that just came to mind. People used to call me to arrange rooms and desks for them and they would look ‘Malidadi’— which is Swahili for marvelous,” Jomeli says.

The name, which he was given while pursuing his diploma in building construction at the then Mombasa Polytechnic (now the Technical University of Mombasa), stuck and would be part of his identity to date.

“That is the same time I was actively doing music as a hobby. I used my music to get some money to buy books. I remember I bought an engineering mathematics book which was very expensive then and everybody wondered how I managed,” Jomeli says.

After completing his diploma, he got a stint as a radio presenter at 91.5 Pulse FM in Mombasa. It was one of the latest radio stations then and had stars like Janet Mbugua and Chiko Lawi, now household names.

“I started by doing Hip Hop shows on Sundays before I was given a breakfast show,” he said. By this time he had established a fully equipped recording studio of his own.

Although he was into rap music, he somehow felt he could not continue doing it as he felt he would make more money from architecture than rapping.

“One of the reasons I got into radio is because of the frustrations I saw in fellow artistes who were taking music as their careers and I felt it was not for me,” he says.

He then upgraded his education and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering course at TUM, graduating with a second upper. That is when his career took off, starting as a contractor for several years while gaining valuable experience.

“The National Industrial Training Authority had a World Bank project that I was incorporated in, giving me a consultancy job where I started picking up.

“I started training contractors for National Construction Authority which I still do to date,” Jomeli says. He is now a technical director at the Kenya Federation of Master Builders and a board member of the Joint Building Construction Council where he was nominated by the Institution of Engineers of Kenya.

Jomeli is also a brand ambassador of the IEK. “We are trying to make engineering interesting,” he says.

Last week, he was at TUM together with the Engineers Board of Kenya where they were talking to engineering students on the process of registration as an engineer in Kenya and how they can move from graduate engineers, professional engineers to consultant engineers eventually.

Jomeli says he likes merging the two fields of engineering and music because it challenges his mind to do better every day.

He says international rap artistes like Rick Ross and Ice Cube also have university degrees and so hip hop, contrary to popular belief, is not only for education failures.

“There is this wrong mentality that music is for people who have not gone to school. Rick Ross has a degree from Howard University. Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean) has a Masters Degree in Electricals,” he says.

During his free time, Jomeli says, he draws caricatures to unwind. “I may sit at a hotel and just draw sketches of the scenery I see at the beach, the camels passing and it just gives me joy and peace of mind. I am gifted at drawing,” he says.

He says for one to do structural engineering, they have to do a lot of calculations. That is why he is opposed to the proposal to scrap off maths as a compulsory subject in high school.

It will affect the people who might later want to do engineering as one cannot take engineering without physics, chemistry and math.

“By the time I’m giving you a detailed drawing, I have done calculations of dead loads, imposed loads, I’ve looked at the earth quick loads, if there are dynamic loads probably there.

“All those and using the code of practice to come up with a certain design,” Jomeli says.

He says his love for drawing had pushed him to become an architect but a chance came up to do civil engineering and he grabbed it without hesitation.

Funny enough, he did not want to study structural engineering because of its demanding nature but somehow found himself pursuing it.

“If you ask me today why I chose structural engineering I cannot tell you,” the Alidina Visram High School alumnus says.

He says if someone told him 20 years ago that he would be a civil structural engineer today, he would have laughed at them.

His parents’ strictness helped him become who he is today. The rod, he says, is the one that kept him in the straight and narrow.

“Today, it is difficult to use the rod on our children because they are just different. You cannot beat them, you cannot do anything that was done to us. They will sue you,” he says.

The effect is more indiscipline cases today than in the past. Jomeli says he is now planning to pursue a PhD.

“Because I see myself in future getting into academics and doing research and all these things that can make our country go into a second-world country status,” he says.

“I am looking at the Bottom Up Economic Transformation Agenda, Vision 2030, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and most importantly the fourth medium term goal 2023-2027,” he says.

Jomeli now looks at the training gaps in the country’s Technical Training Institutes and universities, and construction industry to push Kenya forward.

The engineer was part of the formation of the National Building Code 2024 and makes curricula for different institutes.