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In Boniface Ongeri’s death, Northern Kenya was robbed off a cheerful journalist

News

It is about half past nine on a Tuesday morning in October 2012, and I’m sitting in the KNA newsroom in Garissa silently typing a feature story when a man of about 5.7 silently walks in unnoticed. I’m aware of his presence in the room till he says, “sema warya.”I look up and see his bright face and say, “I’m fine, bro.” He has a Nikon camera dangling on his neck and a notebook in his hand. The guy walks past the three unoccupied desktops in the office and comes direct to where I’m sitting and glances at what I’m writing on my laptop.

The guy is Boniface Ongeri. The Standard Wajir Correspondent who sadly passed away on Monday.

The previous night, gunmen hurled a grenade at a police post in Bula Iftin, and Boni is looking for follow-up story about the attack. I ask him who he is and he calmly says Boniface Ongeri, Standard. Before that day, I only used to hear his name and see his stories in the Standard paper. He was a familiar guy through his byline but never met him in person. He asks me about the incident and I give him a brief recap of what happened before opening a minimized word document resting on the desktop near me. He looks at it briefly, and minimizes the window.

He jolts down something on the notebook and turns to me to discuss the continuous terror attacks Garissa was experiencing during that period. We are later joined by some KNA colleagues where veteran KNA journalist and now Ijara Information Officer, Mohamed Dahir cracks some jokes and jokingly asks Ongeri where Standard online reporter Cyrus Ombati gets the news from Garissa before the journalists on the ground. That question has us all laughing and later Boniface leaves and bids us bye.

After that first encounter, I would later bump into Boniface on different occasions, and he always had a joke or two. During a certain Northern Journalists workshop held at Almond, Boniface came to our table during lunch where I was discussing something with two journalist friends, and wittily introduces a lady friend we all knew. He would say, “Meet my friend and do not snatch her.”  We all laughed because Boni didn’t know we all knew the lady and that she was a close friend of mine. Abdirahman Arte, one of the guys, asks him, “Boni, do you know the lady you are introducing and the guys you are introducing her to? Chunga you may be introducing a woman to her husband unknowingly.” Laughter ensued and Boni joined our table.

I remember Boni talking about the ‘cleverness’ of the Somali people particularly the owners and managers of lodges in both Garissa and Wajir. He told us about the sandals in lodges where they cut the front part so that people do not steal them. “You guys are clever. Yaani mnakata viatu so that they aren’t taken? Haki I must steal this idea and take to my people,” he would say jokingly and we would all laugh. Boni was always cheerful and witty. During meals, he would choose the food the Somalis eat unlike the other non-Somali journalists.

Weeks before the 2013 general election, Boni submitted my name to Standard so that I report from Wajir South constituency. He would later call me from Wajir and tell me to pick my equipment from G-coach office in Garissa and instructed me to head straight to Habaswein a day before the election. It was the only time I saw/heard Boni talking seriously. How cheerful a lad he was!

Outside of his cheerful life, Boni was a guy well versed with Somali community. From politics to lifestyle, from culture to landscapes, he knew everything just like a typical Somali youth. His pieces about Wajir politics and his mouth-watering human interest feature stories were always something the educated elite in North Eastern looked forward to.

Boni’s death is something the entire elite in NEP would mourn and surely it’s robbed us off of an entertainer, educator, informer and, most of all, a true hero who has put news from Northern Kenya on the map more than any other member of the fourth estate.

To Allah we belong and to him we shall return.

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