Otiato Guguyu
When the phone beeps across the morning to Mr Andabwa, it takes a while to be answered and instinctively I realize I may be interrupting something.
The voice, when it finally answers is calm but a note lower towards the whisper variety. There is talk in the background, so I ask if he has a minute.
That cranks old wires, the idea of having time. In retirement Mr Andabwa has all the time there is. He retorts, a moment, he has plenty and gives me a good opening.
Mr Richard Andabwa was nominated to the Africa Scrabble Hall of Fame in January this year in recognition of his role in creating the Pan Africa Scrabble Association.
I knew how a call from a stranger in the middle of nowhere about a media house you have never heard about can be suspicious. Cyber fraud, especially on mobile money has gone up tenfold as Kenya’s economy falters.
I tell him how I got his number, through his colleague Mr John Owegi. They all worked for Barclays Bank of Kenya and retired during the structural adjustment programmes in the 1990.
I told him Mr Owegi felt such an honour deserved media attention. Such stories tend to fall through the rafters in newsrooms so I told him once I got Orals East Africa going, that will be my first order of business.
Old and new journalism
I tried to explain to Mr Andabwa that while Orals East Africa was still a small blurb in the ocean of the internet, we were trying to do things different. I said, I would send him a link, hoping that would validate us.
He would have none of it since he felt that would influence how our interview would go. After years writing reports as a banker, he believed creative stories should be raw and uncut.
He said during his time he read all newspapers, if he could not manage during the week he would store them for the weekend, because there was creativity.
It was from old newspapers that he learned how to write compositions. How to do a good introduction, body, summary and conclusion.
But today, he said, the newspapers are too poor, you cannot spend more than a few minutes reading the paper. They are even making spelling mistakes because Google has taken over.
“You even get one talking about el, double o, and not el, o, s, e when talking about losing something.”
A scrabble man will always take words too seriously, and I know that I am more likely to fall short of his standards too.
Old newsrooms were not just ‘evil gate keepers’, layers of editorial scrutiny, doing the scrubbing, and refining always made sure a draft story emerged on the other side well written and logical.
But budget cuts questioned whether there should be a news editor, sub-editor, a revise editor, a quality editor. And the compromise has become too obvious.
In small newsrooms like ours we also suffer the same challenge, lack of capacity to set up editing and moderation means good quality product is still way off.
Two types of scrabblers
“You probably went into journalism because you liked writing, right?”
The scrabble man’s voice brings me back to the call. A creative story is like those primary school compositions.
They gave you two options, one is to write about a trip to Kisumu. The other is the same trip to Kisumu but they give you certain phrases; then you have to use your creativity so that the story flows from those words.
In scrabble, one tactic is to finish off your seven pieces on the tile and draw another round of pieces, the other is to create a long word with the seven pieces, and BINGO!
You can guess which type of player Mr Andabwa was.
Suddenly he realized he was in the middle of something and said we should talk later.
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