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The highs and lows of being part of FLOTUS’ press pool
I suppose this is as good a point as any to start, I’m standing behind a red velvet rope at the AP Community Faith Ministry Church in Kibra; corralled in what I’ve heard called the press pen. An apt descriptor because like a sheep, I’m incredibly pressed but I’m afraid I may not be granted permission by the Secret Service to use the facilities.
I probably shouldn’t have downed that bottle of water at the Kempinski, but after parting with Ksh500 of my hard-earned money for what would have cost Ksh70 at the most, at the supermarket, I wasn’t going to waste a single drop and I couldn’t take the glass bottle with me.
But in all fairness, I had been loitering in their lobby for the better part of four hours waiting on the First Lady of the United States, Jill Biden. I was one of a select few invited from the national media to document her three-day visit to Kenya as part of her press pool.
This is day two and on the other side of the rope, at the head of a table, is Jill and her Kenyan counterpart Rachel Ruto. As they’re informed that the women seated around them don’t use their names to table bank to protect their anonymity, I multi-task: I simultaneously wonder whether numbers are used to identify them because The Women For Peace, as they call themselves, came together as a group immediately following the post-election violence and whisper to Brenda Czeda and Jacqueline Mahugu, my colleagues from the Standard Group, that I don’t think I can hold it anymore.
This is not the first time I’ve found myself in this predicament in the last two days. Only the day before, in a feat of irony, I was both sweating rivulets and staring longingly at a toilet sign across a hall as we baked in Terminal 2 of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, which for your information, has no working ventilation system.
We were going through the third and final security screening before we’d be allowed onto the tarmac to document the arrival of FLOTUS on Executive 1 Fox Trot. In an effort to distract ourselves from the oppressive heat as we waited for the Americans to search us, we focused our attention on the Secret Service as they too mopped their brows and we voluably carried out an assessment on whether or not they lived up to our imaginings after years of a steady diet of American television.
Are you familiar with the phrase manage your expectations? And no, we’ve moved on from the Secret Service. When we were handed ‘special’ badges as part of Jill Biden’s press pool and advised that we would be taking daily Covid tests, I was happy to rub it in my colleagues’ faces that I would be in close proximity of ‘the principal’ as I’d heard her referred to. Oh how the boastful have fallen.
It really was your typical assignment and half the job of a journalist is waiting. But when the action finally pops off, it moves fast. Such as when I finally made it to the toilet in Kibra and just as I squatted to relieve myself, heard the all too familiar refrain, “we gotta move, we gotta move,” only to wind up sitting in the back of a van with slightly damp shoes & an open back under my newly purchased Ankara coat to wait some more.
I’m happy to wait for hours even under less than ideal conditions when I’m on the scent of a story. And wait we did. Only there was no interview forthcoming for the Kenyan team of journalists.
We waited over a cup of tea when she joined Rachel Ruto at State House, Nairobi. Later that evening, we waited to hear how coming to Kenya changed her life, as she’d narrated to a gathering of women changemakers at the ambassador’s residence. We waited as she exited the room for an interview with the Associated Press.
We waited in the back of a bus as her team ushered her away for another interview after a visit to Shujaaz Inc. before we were unceremoniously dispatched. We waited the next day in Kajiado as she gave another interview, this time to CNN. We did eventually get a statement, together with everyone else, but she would not be taking any questions, we were informed. As it turns out, we were to be seen but not heard.
I may gripe about being treated like a backwater journalist but I must appreciate that she took time to listen to farmers who are at the frontline of a climate emergency, she patiently sat through a table banking session with women in Kibra and took an interest in their ventures, and in the depths of Kajiado, she took time to sit down and engage with the women whose children are wasting away from a want of nourishment. The US government having funded up to 70 per cent of the aid available to area residents. And I must appreciate that she issued a rallying call for more assistance.
So my professional pride may have taken a bit of a beating, I’ll get over it. What matters is that while you were stuck in traffic, I got to ride in her motorcade. Stay humble folks!
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