THROUGH MY AFRICAN EYES – THE STORY OF JEFF KOINANGE

THROUGH MY AFRICAN EYES – THE STORY OF JEFF KOINANGE

By David Wanjala

“He emphasized that due to the state of insecurity and the presence of insurgents with surface-to –air missiles, he would be making what was known as ‘spiral landing’. This would involve dropping the plane from twenty eight thousand feet to ground level in less than two minutes… For the first time in many years of flying, everyone on the plane was quiet.”

 

That is how Africa’s most celebrated journalist, Jeff Koinange, entered Baghdad, Iraq on the Christmas morning of 2004 when duty to cover the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq came calling while he worked for the Cable News Network (CNN).

“An hour-and-a-half later the pilot announced that he was about to begin the descent. Minutes later I could feel the cabin pressure as we swept past mountains making our way to the airport beyond. A few journalists threw up. You can imagine the collective sigh of relief throughout the cabin when the pilot landed.”

After putting on bulletproof jackets, two heavily armed men in khakis escorted Jeff and his team to the CNN Bureau through the ‘Assassins Highway’ that was lined with shells of bombed-out vehicles every few miles and heavily manned check-points.

He was to stay in Baghdad for eight weeks; filming and transmitting live almost everyday from the rooftop of the CNN Bureau within the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The relief and excitement at the end of this kind of ‘deployment’ is huge. However, the day Jeff was to fly out, he got stuck at the airport for five hours before learning that the flight from Jordan had been cancelled following a shootout.

He called the bureau in Baghdad to share his predicament only to be told the managing director and vice president of CNN International, Chris Crammer, was on line for him. “Can you hang in there for two more weeks while we try and get you a replacement?” Crammer, Jeff says, had never asked him for a favour and Jeff found it difficult to say anything except, “Sure, Chris, no problem.”

This little episode, like many others in Jeff’s recently published autography, Through My African Eyes, reveals the behind the scenes daredevil energy that goes into a story before the reporter finally grabs the microphone to face the cameras to bring to the world the breaking or the developing story.

More than anything else, the book demystifies the enigma of Jeff Koinange as it does that of the profession of journalism.

Through My African Eye unveils a boy growing up in the village in late 1960s through the 70s to mid 80s under the tough but loving and determined hands of a widowed, young mother of four.

Born Geoffrey Mwaura Koinange after his maternal grandfather on January 7, 1966, Jeff grew up in the little village of Kiambaa, 30 killometres West of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. He was to later drop the English spelling of Geoffrey and adopt the Americanised version, Jeff.

Jeff’s father, Frederick Mbiyu Koinange was son to Senior Chief Mbiyu Koinange. He died of massive heart attack on March 7, 1966, exactly two months after Jeff’s birth.

Chief Mbiyu Koinange had six wives and Jeff’s father was son to his third wife. Charles Karuga Koinange, Provincial Commissioner of Kenya’s Eastern Province at the time and American- educated Peter Mbiyu Koinange, a close friend of Kenyatta from the many years the two spent in England, were sons to Chief Koinange’s first wife.

Charles Koinange and Peter Koinange have, over time, been presumed by many to be Jeff’s father. Peter was also the first Kenyan African to get a masters degree.

The umbilical cord that binds the Kenyattas and the Koinanges however, is the fact that Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s founding father’s third wife, Grace Mitondo, was Chief Koinange’s daughter.

On March 9, 1966, Frederick Mbiyu Koinange was laid to rest under a Mugumo tree in the family plot in Kiambaa. “Mother sat in Grandfather’s house, as the burial commenced, suckling me. She remembers little of that Wednesday afternoon. Ciru (Jeff’s eldest sister) kept asking when father would be coming home to sort out the commotion,” Jeff writes, obviously from his mother’s recollection.

Jeff’s other siblings included Wangui, the second born and Freddie, his only brother. Jeff brought up the rear in the family of four. They became the responsibility of Mary Koinange, their mother who out of sheer determination maintained her husband’s standards with her average salary as headmistress of Kiambaa Primary School.

Jeff, Freddy, Wangui and Ciru were brought up in the village on a cocktail of a belt and a stick that whipped them back to line whenever they strayed.

Jeff’s mother loved music. She was the only woman in the entire Kiambaa village that owned a record player on which she played the 33-inch and 45-inch singles. This earned her the envy of the village, probably more from the fact that when she played her record player, “she pumped up the volume forcing the whole village to listen.”

She loved American Country and Western pop. Jeff and his siblings grew up listening to hits by Kenny Rodgers, Jim Reeves, Don Williams and Skeeter Davis. Their mother’s all-time favourite was Charley Pride, “the black man from Sledge, Mississipi who sang like a white man.”

Growing up on this kind of music had a great impact on Jeff. The group Boney M, a quartet of three women and one man from Aruba in the Caribbean, for instance, influenced his manner of speech. Their hits included sing-along songs like Daddy Cool and By the Rivers of Babylon.

Another source of pride for the Koinanges was their mother’s cream Volkswagen Beetle. It was one of the few cars in Kiambaa at the time. The Beetle and its escapades is one of the Koinanges’ treasures that bring nostalgia to Jeff to date.

“She was an amazing driver, with all the skills of a professional rally driver especially when it rained. Mother would navigate that Beetle through the mud without so much as a swerve with the four of us holding our breath and praying we did not flip over or get stuck. Folks in Kiambaa nicknamed her ‘Kidae’, a local word meaning the ‘daring one’. She steered us through good and bad times in much the same way”.

Every Sunday, save for Christmas, Easter and occasional wedding when the Koinanges attended the lone church in Kiambaa that was hardly 200 metres way, Mrs Koinange drove her four children to a Sunday school at a Baptist Church in Nairobi along Ngong Road.

A black and white Philips television was yet another of the treasured items in the Koinanges’ household. At the time, television viewing was restricted to between 5:30pm and 11:00pm. Jeff and his siblings were restricted to two first hours.

“When she was out, we would watch the television until we heard the Beetle driving through the gate. Then we could all scramble to bed and pretend we were fast asleep… She could always tell if we had been watching by touching the tubes at the back of the old television to see if they were warm.”

The Koinanges attended Hospital Hill Primary School in the heart of Parklands, Nairobi. At the time, Parklands was an upscale neighbourhood. Hospital Hill was one of the first post-independence schools to integrate Africans. Jeff began his school on January 1, 1972. Like almost every other kid, he cried when his mother dropped him off, in Classroom 1A, and walked back to the car.

Being a natural athlete, every sport at school came easy and the first-day tears were soon forgotten. Their mother dropped and picked them up every day of their school, covering the 60km to and from Kiambaa five days a week.

When standards at Hospital hill began deteriorating, Jeff’s mother defied all urges from her in-laws and close friends to move the Koinanges to her school in Kiambaa. It would save for the struggling family in terms of transport, tuition fees, uniforms and food. But to the resolute Mrs Koinange, “this would have meant a step down, a demotion.”

She was reprimanded to her face and told that she would soon swallow her pride and come down to earth. That only cemented her resolve. Jeff and Freddie were enrolled into Saint Mary’s School in suburban Nairobi and one of the most prominent all boys schools in the country.

Saint Mary’s, spread out over eighty five-acres of land was founded in 1939 by a group of Irish Holy Ghost Fathers. It was modeled after public schools in England. Everything about the school smacked of status. It had a nine-hole golf course where the sons of the rich Kenyans would enjoy a game before, between and after classes. Even then, its motto, Bonitas, Disciplina, Scientia, Latin for Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge, hinted at what the school stood for.

It is Saint Mary’s that formed Jeff. Discipline and hard work were instilled here. For the entire part-primary and High School life Jeff spent here, he was an exemplary athlete as he was impressive in class. He graduated from Saint Mary’s in 1984, having served as the school’s assistant head prefect, rugby team captain and a regular soccer team striker.

His mother’s determination to make sure they had the best education at both primary and secondary level laid their foundation for the future.

“In hindsight, nothing could have been wiser or indeed gutsier but it is also safe to say Mother spent just about every cent she had to make sure that we received the best formal education to prepare us for the outside world,” Jeff writes.

And probably to underscore his love and reverence for his mother, save for once, there is nowhere else in the book does he refer to his mother by her name other than Mother, with initial capital.

Jeff’s first job after Saint Mary’s was as office clerk at Banker’s Trust Overseas Representatives Incorporated. It was a Nairobi based American Merchant bank. The job was courtesy of Rachel Koigi, his mother’s former student.

On a typical day, he would ran errands and feel cool cruising around town in the company car picking up paperwork from the bank’s clients. Linda Joshi, an alumnus of Saint Mary’s also worked here.

It was Linda, six months into Jeff’s Job, who prompted him to apply for the advertised local flight attendant position with Pan Am, a US airline. Linda too, and other more than 10,000 Kenyans applied. Jeff was called for an interview three months later and was lucky to be selected among 40 other Kenyans to undergo training at Pan Am Airway’s Flight Academy in Miami, Florida. Among them was Shaila, a Kenyan of Asian descent who was many years later to become Jeff’s wife. Unfortunately, Linda did not make it.

Of the forty, Jeff made it to the list of the best six that were retained for a two-week further training as Pursers or lead flight attendants. For the next 18 months, from Feb 1986 to June 1987, Jeff worked for the airline’s local flight as an attendant, plying Nairobi-Monrovia.

After civil war ravaged most of the West Africa destinations, Pan Am redirected all its flights through Frankfurt, its European hub. Jeff went on to work for the airline in Frankfurt.

All the while, passengers, especially after listening to Jeff’s in flight announcements insisted broadcasting is what best suited him. In between the joy and fun that came with flying, Jeff thought of going back to school to study journalism.

Isle de Goree or Goree Island, Dakar, ‘one of the most tragic and painful places on the African continent’, is what eventually got Jeff to make up his mind. He had visited the Island along other tourists in one of the many sightseeing tours during his off time.

Thousands of African men and women were taken in chains to Goree Island from the hinterland, put in temporary storage awaiting ships from Europe during the infamous Slave trade. Goree Island was ideal because it would take a healthy man two hours to swim back to shore in the shark-infested waters.

“Many tried their luck, few were successful,” Osman Sy, the Senegalese guide told them. He showed them the square where the weekly slave auctions would take place and the builders and trunks where men and women were chained for the merchants to sample the goods, deciding which to keep and which to discard. “The ones who weren’t bought were simply thrown into the water for the sharks to feed on.”

Many amongst the tourists cried, others bravely held back tears. Goree Island was among the places on the African Continent, buried so deep and kept secret that few bothered to question or even speak-out about. “This to me is a revelation and I hope someone, hopefully me, would be the one to tell this story to countless other Africans,” Jeff decided.

Journalism, he thought, would be his avenue and the voice, which many insisted was his untapped talent, his main instrument. That day, he quietly made a decision to go back to school.

A few months later, he quit from Pan Am, ending his 18-month steamy stint as flight attendant. His last station was Frankfurt, Germany.

He enrolled into Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York in the fall of Autum in 1987 in Broadcast Technology and Management. Community colleges are institutions in the US where students who generally cannot afford four-year college fees get a chance to earn a two-year degree.

If their grades are good enough for a scholarship, they have the choice to continue in four-year universities or seek employment. Working odd jobs including at fast foods for survival as a student, he scored straight As, becoming one of the only two students out of the 5,000 in 1989 with a perfect 4.0 Grade Point Average.

This won him a scholarship at the prestigious New York University (NYU) in the same year and joined as a third year student. He did his mandatory internships with NBC-News as runner for the Today Show and later at the then little known Cable News Network (CNN). He thereafter worked at ABC-News as a desk assistant and later got a call back at NBC-News as overnight producer for the Today Show.

It was Mohammed ‘Mo’ Amin, the celebrated photojournalist (now late), while working with Reuters who called Jeff up from the US in 1995. Mo was in the process of launching the African Journal, a weekly television magazine featuring African stories. Unfortunately, Jeff arrived in Nairobi in September 1995 to find Mo fired from Reuters. His job was still valid though on the African Journal.

He also applied for a supplementary job as a news anchor and reporter at the Kenya Television Network (KTN) where his first appearance on Prime Time news caused a stir. Africa Journal, headed by Michael Bradbury also picked up big time. He quit his job at KTN in 1998 to concentrate on the journal; a move he says was to later open door for future opportunities.

It is at Reuters that Jeff, a rookie professional from the US, honed his journalistic skills. In May 1997, Jeff got his first call up as a first responder – a seasoned journalist flown in for Breaking News stories. It was in Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, where child soldiers had overthrown Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime, ending years of tyranny.

Jeff, with various world’s news agencies including CNN, was to later comb Africa’s cities ravaged with war and natural calamities, telling the story of Africa to the world. His efforts stirred the world to action.

From Freetown in Sierra Leone in 1999 where brother rose against brother and almost wiped out humanity in a civil war. To Mozambique where a massive cyclone slammed against the coast, flooding the entire 2000km coastline from Maputo to Beira in 2000 forcing pregnant women to deliver from the trees.

To Bukavu, DR Congo in 2005 where Dr Mukwege Mukengere had dedicated his entire resources to treating victims of rape (girls as young as 14 to women as old as 70 and above) by Joseph Kabila’s soldiers to the Niger Delta in Nigeria where Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) attacked expatriate oil workers and military outposts to demand for a share of the riches of oil on their land.

To the marvels of multi-billion dollar Basilique Notra Dame De La Paix de Yamoussoukro, The Our Lady of Peace Basilica, built by Felix Houphouet Boigny, former Ivorian President, as a gift to his people.

The irony of the largest church in the world, bigger than Saint Peter’s in Rome, is that it was built in northern part of Ivory Coast, dominated by Muslims. The only two times it was ever filled to its capacity of 320, 000 worshippers was when John Pope the II opened it and in 1993 during the funeral of President Felix. It was built for ten years, from 1980 to 1991 at Sh300 million (Sh26.3 billion) with everything including cement, marble floors, stained glass imported from overseas – sheer opulence of African dictators.

He also covered Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans, US, the one that put to test the abilities of the world’s super power in disaster management. Above all, Jeff covered the major conflict regions of the world amassing along the way trophy after trophy.

His nature of work meant he rubbed Africa’s strongmen the wrong way particularly in Nigeria where a smear campaign on his integrity was orchestrated. He severed links with CNN, his last international media house, in unclear circumstances in mid 2000.

In his entire working as a top flying journalist, however, Jeff exhibited most of the must-have abilities for successful journalism including humility. He is not superhuman and he had to endure tough moulding as he came through.

Mark Engel, for instance, a head writer and executive producer at CNN International told him blatantly after reading one of his scripts to think of another career, like a used car salesman. This was during a yearly evaluation in Atlanta in his first two initial years at CNN.

Michael Schulder, a CNN international writer with a knack for making one see differently would always ask, “What exactly are you trying to say here Jeff, tell me in your own words. I realize English is your second or third language.” Michael would then advise Jeff to always use the KISS syndrome, Keep It Simple and Stupid, “That is what viewers understand best.” He would later grow to write edit-free scripts.

Later in 2007, Jeff was roped in to drive the wheels of the nascent K24 television, Kenya’s first ever 24-hour all news channel. It was Ken Tiven, former CNN executive vice president who rang him up, connected him to Rose Kimotho and then talked him into coming back to Kenya from South Africa. He would later coil the rallying slogan, ‘All Kenyan All the time’ at K24 as he helped nurture raw but enthusiastic talent into all round journalists.

Jeff’s journalistic experiences in the wild Africa and elsewhere echo core values of service. Many a times he would cut short birthday celebrations or Christmas parties to go break a story thousands of miles away from home. He always strived to give a story more than one angle. He persisted and stayed steadfast in pursuit of a story, even in the most savagery of environment.

Through My African Eyes is much the story of the events shaping Africa from mid 1990s to mid 2000 and how they were reported as is about Jeff Koinange, the self-made enigma. It is a story you would not want to miss.

The book will be launched on July 19 at Hotel Intercontinental and will be available in all leading bookshops.