A recent road trip to Kima village near Salama in Makueni County brought back sweet memories of working at a leading media house in the country and by extension in East and Central Africa.
The ride with former colleagues at Nation Media Group was not only enjoyable but also an opportunity to go back in time during our tour of duty in the News Room at Nation House on Tom Mboya Street and later at Nation Centre, also called the Twin Towers, on Kimathi Street.
We started the journey at the crack of dawn from the city’s Langata area where Toni Sitoni was behind the wheels with Pamela Makotsi Sitoni as his co-driver with yours truly on the back seat.
Memory lane trip
We then diverted on Langata Road to Mbagathi Way (recently renamed Raila Odinga Way) heading West to pick Rhoda Orengo, who was waiting for us at the entrance of Riara University, Nairobi Campus.
From there, we drove back to Langata Road and then connected with the Southern bypass next to Carnivore Restaurant and Uhuru Gardens and proceeded to the junction of Mombasa Road, near Ole Sereni Hotel, where we turned right to connect with a new link road into the Nairobi National Park that helped avoid the headache of traffic jams and gridlocks.
The stress-free morning drive from Ole Sereni to Nation Printing Press on Mombasa Road, gave us a breathtaking view of the National Park, the only one in the world that is next to an urban centre.
Thanks to Sitoni’s knowledge of the new route, the first traffic jam we encountered was on Mombasa Road near Mlolongo town, in Machakos County, where the raised multi-billion shillings superhighway project begins all the way through down town to Westlands area on Waiyaki Way.
Breaking the ice ceiling
Out of the four, only Pamela is still with NMG, where she is the Executive Editor, having risen in the ranks from a reporter, sub-editor and later as the Editor for East African. Pamela also served as Managing Editor for The Standard Group before resigning and working for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) at the Gigiri, offices in Nairobi.
Sitoni had served for over a decade as a reporter and a sub editor before he resigned and landed a job at the World Bank. On her part, Rhoda Orengo served for over two decades as a sub-editor and Associate Editor before she retired and has since gone into private business and consultancy work.
Orlale served for 21 years, seven as Kisumu Bureau Chief, and five as a Senior Parliamentary Reporter before being given an early retirement in 2009. He has since joined African Woman and Child Feature Service (AWC), a media Non-Governmental Organisation, as a media consultant and Monitoring and Evaluation officer.
Orengo and Orlale joined the Nation Newspapers Limited, as it was then known, in the 1980s, and served under George Mbuggus, as Editor in Chief, at Nation House, when the newsroom was like a Tower of Babel, reporters using typewriters to file their stories, while their colleagues used land lines to call their news sources while others hand the hand set on their shoulders as they received telephone calls from correspondents across the country.
In those days, the News Editor would receive a reverse telephone calls from the correspondents and reporters who were in the field, get debriefed about what the story is about, once he had cleared it, he would order one of the reporters who was available to take the story and key-it in, on other words hear the words and type them on a typewriter.
Ugly incident
The next moves was for the reporter to proof read the article and then send the four copies attached with carbon papers to the sub-editor to work on it before it was cleared for publication by the Chief Editor and the Managing Editor, respectively.
I still recall one ugly incident when I was taking a news story from our Kisii Correspondent, Peter Angwenyi, when the Editor-in-Chief who loved to walked around the newsroom puffing his cigarette and checking on every reporter’s story literally behind their backs, came to where I was working and shouted at me about the angle of the story.
Thundered the Editor-in-Chief next to my left ear as the other one was on the call from Kisii town: “What kind of story is this you are taking from the correspondent?”
But before he could say any more, I blew my top and answered back sarcastically reminding him that I had two ears and could not listen to the correspondent on the long distance call and him at my back at the same time!
Mbuguss was unmoved and continued to shout at the top of his voice causing a fuss and bringing the News Room to a standstill as fellow editors, reporters, photographers watched in shock.
The explosive situation was only brought under control by the intervention of News Editor Joseph Karimi, Managing Editor Joe Kadhi and Chief Librarian, Charles Malei, who told us to cool down as they politely pulled our fuming boss to his office to ease the tension.
I resumed with taking the news story over the phone and then handed the typed copies to the News Editor.
Costly bomb hoax
The matter ended there, but with a stern warning to me by the bosses to respect the big boss: “Whether he is right or wrong!” I got the message, but was seething with anger under my breadth and almost felt like giving him an upper cut on his chin. What came to mind was the popular KBC weekly wrestling programme, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment, where bulky and muscled men like Big Daddy, would try to turn their opponents into mincemeat, literally.
I also remembered our guest speaker at my graduation at University of Arizona, in Tucson, USA, in 1984, who challenged us to be weary of the “idiosyncrasies” of our future bosses and “to always learn to challenge authority.”
Another incident was between our cartoonist, Paul Kelemba, aka Madd, and Deputy News Editor, Philip Wangalwa, who was not amused at his joke about a bomb planted in the men’s washroom at around lunch time.
Instead of laughing it off like the rest of the journalists, Phillip Wangalwa aka OB (Observation Book), went to the toilet, retrieved the strange object wrapped in a cigarette package and placed it on the News Desk. He then telephoned the police to come and investigate and if there was nothing, then arrest Maddo for false alarm.
After 30 minutes, the armed officers combed the entire newsroom and found nothing; they then whisked Maddo off to the Central police station where he spent the night as a State Guest before he was taken to the Law Courts the following day and charged with the offence.
Maddo was later released on a Shs10, 000 bond and a hearing date was set. The following day, the cartoonist was back in the office cracking more jokes about his arrest, confinement and charge in court before he was released as a bemused OB watched him warily!
The case was covered by Chief Court Reporter Andrew Kuria, who was ironically listed as an eyewitness! But when the time came to testify, Kuria declined and the Prosecutor threatened to declare him “a hostile witness! The case was later dropped and Maddo’s Shs10, 000 bond was refunded to him.
Another drama was when a prominent businessman stormed into the news room, demanded to see the Chief Editor, and on entering his office started to shout and threatened him with dire consequences for publishing an alleged defamatory story.
As the verbal exchange threatened to deteriorate, one of the telex operators, Hassanali, whose office was next to Mbuguss; rushed to the rescue of his boss, grabbed the man from the back by holding his trouser and lifted him in the air and dragged him out of the newsroom.
Defender of the boss
Hassanali, who was a member of the Ismailia community, whose head is H.H. Aga Khan, then physically threw the small-bodied man to the ground floor on the staircase as staff and members of the public in the waiting room watched in horror and amusement. The matter ended there and no word was heard from the victim or his lawyer.
But the lowest moment at Nation House was when a team of policemen men stormed the newsroom and arrested Wahome Mutahi, Sunday Nation sub-editor and leading columnist, Whispers.
They did not produce any search warrant or arrest warrant, just picked Whispers like tea pickers pick the cash crop, not to be seen until after a week when he was presented in the Chief Magistrates Court under arrest and charged with being a member of Mwakenya, so-called dissident group. He was also accused of being in possession of Mwakenya, a prohibited publication which spoke out about the excesses of President Moi’s authoritative regime.
Mwakenya dissidents
Whispers, like other journalists, opposition politicians, university students and lecturers, was tortured and forced to plead guilty to the offence and sentenced to serve five years without an option of a fine.
Indeed, Nation House was full of drama on the eve of the introduction of computers to replace the noisy typewriters. We were shocked for the management to announce that the entire newsroom would get a facelift before then and have a wall-to-wall carpet, new seats and air fans to boot!'
Officials of the then powerful Kenya Union of Journalists, led by Secretary General George Odiko, were not amused and chided the management saying: “The computers are more important than the staff! Why did the management ignore our request to improve the working environment earlier?”
Fast forward to move to the brand new Nation House, which was more spacious, well furnished with new furniture and computors, it was like the biblical story of Moses leading the Israelis to cross the Red Sea to the Promised Land. The joke then by some of the editors was that: “Many of you will see the Twin towers, but few of you will ever enter it, like Moses!”
But the prediction was spot on for the Chief Editor and Managing Editor who were replaced by Wangethi Mwangi and Tom Mshindi, before the relocation to Kimathi Street.
On the big day when we moved to ‘The Promised Land in the Twin Towers,’ morale has never been better; there was a desk for every sub editor, editor, photographer and reporters.
Computors were on every desk to be shared by three reporters and in addition to the beautiful swinging chairs and numerous telephone handsets, our News Editor, Mutegi Njau, and his Deputy, Job Githinji, had ensured that the firm hired copytakers to deal with long distance calls from Nation correspondents from around the country.
Lucy Kibaki’s tantrums
The lowest moment at Twin Towers was when Lucy Kibaki, First Lady, stormed into the newsroom at midnight in May 2005, and stayed until 5 in the morning protesting over “media bashing” of her husband, Mwai Kibaki, and their family.
I missed the drama by a whisker as I was marked as the Late Night Reporter, but I had switched with another colleague in the eleventh hour. Lucy Kibaki took siege of the entire newsroom with her six-man security and handlers helplessly protecting her as she was covered live by the CCTV cameras.
At one point, she got so irritated by the a photographer, Clifford Derrick, whom she went ahead and slapped him: “What are you doing? Stop! We cannot entertain lies, it is illegal and it is a crime!”
Later, the First Lady filed a complaint with the Media Council of Kenya’s complaints committee, but walked out in protest at their offices when the meeting was starting off Ngong Road next to Day Star University.
She was MCK Executive Director, Esther Kamweru, was to chair the meeting and demanded that she be replaced by Kwendo Opanga. But that was still not enough for her as she accused him of being biased and mishandling her case saying: “I have been abused by women editors (referring to Nation and The Standard Newspapers) how can I sit here and have another woman chair this meeting! I am not ready to be ridiculed anymore!”
The first lot of copy-takers was Jayne Rose Gacheri and Christine Kawira, who were later given a hand by Domitila Katila and Lydia Mkala as the workload increased for both reporters and correspondents out in the field.
Our recent trip to Kima Hills was to see off our former colleague, Domitila, who had served NMG for 26 years before she retired and went for further studies for a Masters of Business Administration degree.
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