Jeremy stands in a down-at-heel part of an African capital with local camera man Isaiah. He clears his throat and smooths his hair in order to be camera ready, weighing up whether to don the bullet proof flak jacket and riot helmet that lie at his feet. Looking around at a scene of relative peace and calm, he decides against it.
“If you could just nudge that burning tyre a little to the right Isaiah? With your foot. Left a bit. Perfect.”
Jeremy heard reports of a street riot in a less well known city slum this morning but once he had managed to rustle up Isaiah, who then got hopelessly stuck in traffic (heavy camera equipment had prohibited the use of a motorbike taxi), the fracas had died down. Jeremy arrived just as Ian from CNN was zooming away from the scene in a cab looking smug with a cappuccino takeaway cup in hand (Ian’s runner, Cathy, is always a diamond for finding a world class cup of coffee whilst in extremis).
“What’s this place called again?” Jeremy asks Isaiah, “Madeira, no Mandera is it? What?”
Isaiah raises his eyes to heaven before turning to exchange a polite greeting and shake hands with a former school master who happens to be walking past. Isaiah knows Mandera well since he used to live there.
Sadly it is beyond Jeremy’s skills of persuasion to encourage the locals to take up arms once again, so the burning tyre will have to do. However, Jeremy does manage to incorporate two women arguing over a stand pipe into the back of one shot, which is a lucky fluke. As Jeremy and Isaiah go about their business, a knot of men, women and children have gathered to stand and watch the filming with disarming curiosity. One man picks his nose and a Maasai leans on his stick as Jeremy asks Isaiah to lie on the ground and take a couple of shots skyward, through the dwindling flames. These will be cut into the news feature later.
Nothing had ever been the same since the political unrest of 2017 which was Jeremy’s moment to shine. Those were the days; dashing from election tallying centre to protest rally in quick succession. As news broke, Jeremy found himself fronting international news broadcasts before being outranked by international ‘big gun’ reporters who arrived business class via BA from London once the story went global. International news teams set up camp at the Serena Hotel for a full three weeks, existing on whisky on the rocks and endlessly speculating over whether this was going to be ‘another Rwanda’. When holy of holies Orla Guerlin arrived, Jeremy was demoted from reporter to general dogs body. There was also that embarrassing debacle when Jeremy led the UK news team to the wrong venue for the President’s first official press statement, causing the entire BBC team to watch helplessly as events unfolded live on CNN.
Back to Mandera and a small, tousled boy in a poor state of dress emerges, whistling, from a tin roofed shack to take a leisurely pee al fresco. The clatter of cooking pans, a scolding voice and a smell of cooking oil from within, implies that a midday meal is on the go. Jeremy takes up his microphone, issuing instructions to his cameraman;
“Quick Isaiah, focus on me and make sure you get that boy in the background.”
Isaiah’s camera starts rolling and Jeremy broadcasts in low tones;
“It’s midday in Mandera slum and a sense of utter hopelessness pervades…”
The child goes back inside his house but not before spiritedly kicking a homemade football from the doorway. Isaiah packs away the camera. The crowd, who had gathered to watch the strange interloper, melt happily into a maze of alleyways leading to homesteads, bars, roadside shops and salons and the sound of music from vernacular radio stations, that signify life continuing as normal.
First appeared in The UK Telegraph here: Jeremy the news reporter in Nairobi
Africa Expat Wives Club 