.....The lighter side of the newsroom

 

THE balding mzee kept oral literature alive as he recycled and repackaged tales under a tent that served as a canteen/training room. He told a story about when he was editor of The Uganada Times in the Obote II regime.

“We had gone for a function at minister Peter Otai’s home in Soroti. After the president addressed people at the Sports Ground, the guests were invited for dinner in Oderai,” narrates Ben Bella Illakut.

“We drank lots of ajono (millet beer). Then the time for feasting was announced. We made a queue for the barbecue. I was salivating — you know how long Obote’s address often was especially on Uhuru Day?”

Bracing the listeners for the climax, Illakut stopped his narrative for a while.

“The line was moving very slowly as every guest loaded a chicken thigh, woven/stuffed intestine,  goat’s rib and a mountain of millet bread onto their plates.”
As luck would have it, when it was Illakut’s turn to load his plate, a security operative grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and whisked him out of the compound.

“You can imagine how my taste buds were rioting and bracing for a good kill!”
Illakut says he never partied that day and had to walk back to town, five kilometres away, on an empty stomach.

His crime? Writing negative stories about the Uganda People’s Congress and Milton Obote. Scribes still debate whether the old man was revealing how the state of the media was in the 1980s, to the present times, or whether he was humouring them.
In another episode, Illakut divulges information about his romantic episode with a white girl and the sanitary conditions she suffered in his village.

“One time I fell in love with a mzungu. I took her to my village for kwanjula. Then she wanted to answer nature’s call. By then there were no toilets in my village.” He pauses.
“When she asked me where she can wee wee (piss) I took her under a mango tree and went back to chat with elders.”

That day, the elders narrated to him the rough and tough times that Teso went through under Idi Amin. He had just returned from Nairobi where he had fled the political turmoil back home. While his “idalingi” (darling) was helping herself, Illakut was told about prominent sons of the soil who had lost their lives.

Renonwned story teller and journalism trainer escaping from
the tent under which he practised his skill when it collapsed

 

“It was at this point that we heard a squeal from Idalingi. Oh no Darling! Am going to die! It is so big…” screamed the mzungu.

As all eyes were cast to the mango tree, her nude body emerged.

“That was the end of our relationship. How dare she indecently expose her nakedness to my parents and clan elders…?”

Ilakut’s listeners took the cue and started narrating similar urban-based humourous stories. There was one Emmy Olaki, who mastered the art, and mincing his story with rib cracking jokes.

“A handsome man with an O moustache went benching (wooing) girls in the university,” Olaki opens a tale. “The drop dead gorgeous girls whispered about his perfume, elegance and oral mannerism — the perfect boyfriend.”

Olaki pauses and adds that not until one of the pretty ones stood up with her arms akimbo and voiced a widely shared view among all of them.

“On campus we no longer want handsome men. We want a guy who has money.”
Another time, Olaki would call one for a cup of tea under the tent and whisper tales about one Kasaja who went for an HIV test. After 20 minutes, the doctor came out of the laboratory.
“I have bad news for you gentleman.” Kasaja gasps for breath. He faints. Then Olaki delivers the punchline: “The bad news was that power had gone off at the clinic.”

Today, a scribe, James Odomel, is endowed with the art of being able to mimic anybody in the newsroom.

He can talk with a slur like one of his editors. or imitate the dance moves of another. He leaves colleagues doubling over in laughter about his nocturnal escapades in Kireka, Serena Hotel, India and Wandegeya.

Then there is The New Vision’s ‘Court Martial’. This system is a thumbs-up gesture for one who has excelled or moved to another stage in life.

The photo editor, Jimmy Adriko, says: “This court dates back to when Emmy Allio was still with The New Vision. I remember the highest ranked person to be brought to the dock was MD/Editor-in-Chief William Pike, after he bought a Prado. He was fined a crate of soda and cookies for all those present at the ‘hearing’.”

Other victims were journalists who returned from career development trips abroad. A few are fined for misconduct, but often it is good deeds that are rewarded.

Recently, on the Guest Writer pages, former Sunday Vision editor Joachim Buwembo, congratulated The New Vision’s monumentous achievements in keeping up with the demands of a rapidly changing technological and economic environment.

He recalled how, when he became Sunday Vision editor in 1997, and vowed to start printing the front and sports pages in full colour. By then, it was a novelty in Uganda.”

By then, photographs had to be taken to Nkrumah Road for colour separation. There were no digital photographs and mobile phones. Most journalists moved around on foot.
One cannot help but wonder how copy flowed.