Maggie Wainaina - a Reuters legend who saved me from jail

Margaret Wainaina was a legend of the Nairobi bureau.

She was the first person I met when I arrived on the 12th Floor of Finance House in downtown Nairobi at the start of my work placement after completing my graduate journalism course at the University of Nairobi in mid-1990. Courteous. Welcoming. Providing guidance on all administrative arrangements.

She was there to console me when my dad passed on, on the last day of 1990. Although she was only a dozen years or so older, she was very much acting as mom-in-chief. Supportive without being intrusive. She and Frances Kerry, whom I've always held in high regard, were my incredible rocks at that time and helped me through the grief.

Maggie's alertness is also the reason I was not jailed in 1992, after I had an altercation with government functionaries. Thinking quickly, she alerted then bureau chief Jonathan Clayton about strange visitors to the bureau, who had taken  off with me to a longer-than-usual coffee appointment. The day-long drama that followed is a story for another day, but suffice it to say I escaped any court appearance. 

Maggie was tolerant to a fault. She supported not only the Reuters folk, but dozens of non-Reuters correspondents who walked in and out of the bureau with abandon, day in and day out. I doubt she received the acknowledgement and appreciation that she deserved for this commitment. But more than any other person in the bureau, she understood this as part of her mission to protect the Baron's brand.

As everyone knows, Reuters took ages to embrace the gospel of diversity and that means there were many good people of colour who left to pursue other interests because of the belief they could not fully fulfil their potential there. But Maggie stayed on. She stoically battled these issues, and in the fullness of time she got her righful promotions, serving out her full career until retirement.

Those who worked with Maggie remember her warmly.

Other former East Africa hands who paid tribute to Maggie included photographer Corinne Dufka.. "Ah Maggie -- a kinder, more-generous person I don't think I've ever met, truly. She was the mom or sister who just about every foreign hack spending time in the Reuters office came to rely on...just such a lovely person. We will miss her."

Peter Smerdon, deputy Nairobi bureau chief in the 1990s said: "I remember Margaret very well and her hard work to ensure the Nairobi office had the best admin support when needed in the most difficult circumstances. We could have done nothing without her."

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