We recently caught up with Keabetswe Jan in an exclusive interview and a first of many about her upbringing and everything that led up to her explosive \u201cO JEWA KE ENG?\u201d tweet that just won\u2019t stop blowing up her phone. Born and bred in Grassland Bloemfontein, Kea, better known as @akreana_ on her social feeds, brushes off speculations that she is from Johannesburg. Kea is an 18-year-old Bloem girl who started her schooling career in Kruitberg Primary School and went to St Michael\u2019s Girls School from 2014 and finished her matric last year.<\/p>\n
Kea has always had an interest in people and started helping out her peers with their problems while still in high school but just doing small things like lending an ear and offering help where she could.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not professional because I was still in matric, but I posted on my bio that people should text me or DM if they ever needed someone to talk to because depression is really real\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the event that she could not offer help, she would seek out people who could assist or resources for those in need. Her dream has always been to go into psychology because she\u2019s always had a passion for people; helping them and giving back. However, after some time she realized just how many psychologists actually exist and she opted for gynaecology. She says through gynaecology, she would still be able to help women with their cervical issues. Kea is currently studying nursing at the Free State School of Nursing (FSSON) doing her first year and she is also working as an intern at Phedisa Health Clinic.<\/p>\n
What we\u2019ve always wanted to know, including thousands of other people is what she was going through when she posted that tweet, KEA O NE A JEWA KENG?! She laughs and says that she remembers the morning vividly, it was 7 in the evening and she wasn\u2019t bothered by anything or even throwing \u201cskempe\u201d at anyone. The tweet came out of genuine concern because she had posted \u201cSay It With Your Chest\u201d<\/strong> in December 2018, and while people still responded to that tweet, it somehow did not receive as much traction as the legendary \u201cO JEWA KE ENG\u201d<\/strong> tweet which has seen her get responses from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and earned her her verification stamp. She had no idea that those 4 words would catapult her life in that manner because she had been asking people to vent to her from high school. \u201cContrary to popular belief, I still had a large following on social media, with about 50 000 followers on twitter prior to that one tweet\u201d. She now sits on more than 100\u00a0000 followers on Twitter alone.<\/p>\n She\u2019s since founded a foundation, O Jewa Keng Foundation which aims to help people find jobs and receive professional help for their psychological problems. Through her tweet, she found that most people were dealing with abuse and depression, mostly due to unemployment and not having funding for their studies. She was and still is amazed at the amount of help people received through her RTing what they needed. She\u2019s had people receive help with their tuition fees, domestic violence and get permanent employment. She currently has a job vacancy thread on her timeline for anyone seeking employment, given that they meet the requirements.<\/p>\n Having helped so many people from just that tweet, Kea is extremely grateful for touching several lives and being able to help them. \u201cI have no words, but I\u2019m glad that I have been instrumental in people receiving jobs and unburdening them of their tuition fee woes. It feels so good that I did something. Even though I didn\u2019t think it would be this impactful, I\u2019m glad it happened and that people are getting the help they need.\u201d<\/p>\n As we head into Youth Month, Kea would like to encourage her peers to be more giving of themselves because you never know who you can touch by living your truth. She\u2019s faced backlash from people asking her to take down her tweet but she says there will always be negative energy from some people throughout ones life and she would like to advise her peers to not give into those noises. She mentions her mom as her go to person when she needs a shoulder to lean on.<\/p>\n Kea has been Ayana Magazine\u2019s youngest Ambassador from August 2018, because of her offering counselling to people last year. She is also an Ambassador for Koena Clothing, the face of Noni Exotic Hair and sells her own \u201cO Jewa Ke Eng?\u201d T-shirts. Her aspirations for the future include being successful and happy. \u201cHa ke popa, ke batla batho ba pope le nna! I don\u2019t just do things for myself, but for the people in my life as well.\u201d Besides that, she just wants to go into medicine as that has been her main goal from childhood, mainly gynaecology as she loves babies and is fascinated by a woman\u2019s body and what it can do. We wish her all the best in her future endeavours as she has even bigger plans lined up for herself, which she cannot reveal at this moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We recently caught up with Keabetswe Jan in an exclusive interview and a first of many about her upbringing and everything that led up to her explosive \u201cO JEWA KE ENG?\u201d tweet that just won\u2019t stop blowing up her phone. Born and bred in Grassland Bloemfontein, Kea, better known as @akreana_ on her social feeds, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgr.digitalshero.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}