What a season! Inasmuch as I hate to personalise the latest tragedy in the media industry, news of veteran journalist and my contemporary Chege Mbitiru’s death just over 10 days ago hit me hard.
Coming less than a month after the tragic death of celebrated author, scholar and journalist Ken Walibora, the WhatsApp message bearing the news had that numbing effect that speaks denial, as you hope against hope that it’s just fake news.
My first contact with Chege was in March 1979 when I joined Nation Newspapers Ltd, which has now morphed into the Nation Media Group — the biggest media house in Eastern and Central Africa. He was fairly reserved and often kept to himself, as did I. We served under Alfred Araujo, the managing editor of the Sunday Nation.
The “social distance” was short-lived as my byline — Staff Writer, Sunday Nation — soon betrayed me. Chege came into the cubicle we called the Sunday Nation desk at Nation House on Tom Mboya Street one morning to tell me that I was his wife’s schoolmate.
Of course I remembered Jean Munene from our days at Alliance Girls. She had since dropped the name Jean and added her matrimonial name Mbitiru to her Embu name, Wanja.
Soon after, Alfred relocated to England, leaving his perch to Chege. Although Editor-in-Chief Joe Rodrigues maintained a vice-like grip on Sunday Nation content, especially on investigative matters (I wrote the weekly “Insight” column), Chege, like Alfred Araujo, was my line manager.
So thorough was he that he went through my stories with a fine-tooth comb. So meticulous was he that he dismissed my “breaking news” of the first ever HIV case diagnosed in Kenya, never mind that the source was impeccable — University of Nairobi microbiology Professor Herbert Nsanze.
It took a whole year for the story to finally appear, and in a rival newspaper. This was only after its publication in The East African Medical Journal. That’s how careful he was not to publish “rumours”. It hurt … but it was not enough to spoil a cordial work and family friendship.
Although Chege’s tenure at the helm of the Sunday Nation was short-lived — he found greener pastures at the Associated Press in 1985 — our friendship lived on.
One of my fondest memories of Chege was his sense of humour. I was — and still am — “very good” at misplacing things. When it happened, as it often did, with a notebook containing the information I needed to complete a story, he would go: “Dorothy, when you are 40, you won’t know where your foot is”. His relaxed demeanour ensured that I didn’t become too tense to find the notebook. Then there was a domestic helper he had nicknamed ET — for extra-terrestrial, after a 1982 film of the same name — because of her unpredictable ways.
He never stopped chuckling at the fact that one of our best training editors at the Nation, Bob Hitchcock, was once a hangman. I never believed Chege, until curiosity drove me to confront Bob with the question. Wearing the saddest look I have ever seen, he confessed that he, indeed, had been, and that it was a traumatic experience. I was unable to delve deeper into the life of a hangman-turned-journalist.
Chege loved life and lived it to the fullest, including smoking a pipe that could have shortened his life. I consider his death at 77 untimely; Kenyans are living well into their 90s. Chege’s departure is, therefore, a big loss, not just to his wife and children (Njihia and Nyaga), but to the entire media fraternity.
Ms Kweyu is a former Revise Editor, Daily Nation. Currently she is a freelance journalist and consulting editor ([email protected])
