A couple of years back, Mwai Kibaki declared either hunger or drought in Kenya a national disaster and appealed to the international community to assist. I think he called a press conference at State House to announce it. Obviously the following day the story was headline in all papers. That day, the US Ambassador was visiting the bomb blast site for a memorial service and I was assigned to cover the event. As usual, my brief, like all other journalists, was to get the US govt response to Kibakis SOS. In his speech, the ambassador never mentioned a thing about the national disaster. We were not to go back to the newsroom without his comment on it. So we moved closer for a direct interview with him. No journalist wanted to break the ice and ask him directly if the US could help us. We clearly looked like beggars. But Chris Kirubi who was present among the VIPs decided to break it for us. He directly challenged the ambassador to say if his government would do something. He did it in very diplomatic language. The ambassador used very few words to answer, The US government will respond positively. Non of us journalists asked him any other question. We left immediately all so happy for what Kirubi had done for us. The following day, the headlines were screaming in town, US GOVERNMENT TO RESPOND TO..... we all carried the six-word quote from the ambassador and the rest of the story we fixed it.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 12:28:39 +0000
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