Otiato GuguyuI started covering the #EndFemicide protests just after they had set off from Kisumu's revolutionary round about of Kondele.
It was my first real journalistic work here, and I had become rusty. The last time I covered protests, were the violent University of Nairobi street battles as a cab reporter. You were sent there for colour, to add the paragraphs describing tear gas and which streets were shut down.
But here I was with a camera as well. I was supposed to engender the new journalism that requires us to be able to produce, written narratives, photography and video all at a go; combining three separate roles to allow media companies to down size.
So with my minimal photography guesswork, I went clicking away as the #EndFemicide protest made their way through the city and drove their statement home.
At first it was difficult for me to decide what to look out for in the protest. Should I look for a few photos that capture the sense of the protests and run back to the newsroom like I did during my cab reporter days. Or should I trail along and actually find out what that sense really was.
Having come late I had abandoned my car somewhere and was quietly deciding against that temptation. I had barely been in Kisumu long enough to know how fast they could dismantle side mirrors or how rib-elbowy their Kanjo were.
Knock, knock, click
But my first shots were terrible, I messed up with the settings that I had been taught to use and the automatic was just off.
My imposter syndrome in the lane of photojournalism showed as I stayed on the sidelines of the women and men, shrouded in mourning black. They ruffled past me, and I was blinded by the little viewfinder window and my winked eye and clumsily went knock, knock, click.
But when I checked, let us just say it was something else. I wasted the first few frames clicking grainy out of focus images while trying to look like I knew what I was doing.
By the time I figured how to adjust the ISO, aperture and shutter speed we had gone the distance and the choice had been made.
I have been part of protests before both as a journalist and an activist. I interned at Kituo Cha Sheria where I had the opportunity to be involved in social activism.
As a journalist I had worked along photojournalists who are the real guys who cover protests. I remember working along them while I collected color and they were a completely different set of journalists. They snaked their way through the protests ran the lengths of it, looking for the most animated part of the crowd to capture very exciting images.
So I tried mimicking them, going through the crowds clicking away as the it filed past me, looking for everything and nothing.
I clicked at everything and everyone, I clicked at sidewalks, at the traffic, at the police and slowly got absorbed into the fold as part of the protest.
Femicide should have to explain itself
All along the way as I dove into the crowd and emerged at the back trailing and catching up, I kept getting curious questions from the city residents asking what the kerfuffle was all about.
Dressed in black, I must have looked like an extension of the protests. in explanation, I tried to describe what Femicide was, the killing of women just because they were women. As literally as I could.
While there has been debate on whether there is a rise in femicide cases or the recent anecdotal cases amount to a case of Poisson clumping, for women who are the survivors and know the victims personally one more femicide is one too many.
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