By FARAJ DUMILA
The Coast media fraternity has lost one of its pioneer journalists - Francis Raymond, popularly known as 'Rafiki'.
The Coast media fraternity has lost one of its pioneer journalists - Francis Raymond, popularly known as 'Rafiki'.
His death saddened several hundred of
his colleagues with whom he always worked with a strong sense of co-operation
and in a warm and friendly atmosphere.
It was he and the late Neta Peal who
established a bureau for the Daily Nation early in the 1960s and he soon
was recognized for his outstanding news reporting.
A Mombasa colleague fondly recalled
how “Francis was particularly concerned with accuracy and good English.”
He rose from a junior reporter to
senior reporter and eventually Coast Bureau Chief. In the process he succeeded
his colleagues Bureau Chief Adrian Grimwood and Commercial Manager Shiraz
Alibhai with comparative ease.
He was later transferred
to Nairobi where he was a sub-editor -- mainly editing news from the
Coast as by then there was a fully-fledged page for Coast news and features in
the Coast edition of The Nation.
Rafiki was a reliable, friendly,
helpful and extremely hard-working newsman.
This writer is ever grateful for his
consistent help he used to offer that enabled him to continue for several
years, during the writer's tenure, as a regular contributor to both Daily
Nation and Taifa leo.
On his retirement, with Hon. Joe
Hamisi and sportswriter Abdurahaman Shariff, he established a short- lived,
fortnightly, bilingual (English and Kiswahili) periodical for Coast readers.
Two weeks earlier to his death,
Rafiki had lost his beloved wife.
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