Catherine-Wanbua Soi, a reporter with Al Jazeera satellite television network, tells Daily Trust on Sunday how she copes with the challenges of her work
Catherine Soi started working as a journalist when the tools of the profession were unsophisticated. They were mostly pen and paper. The more modern tools came along over time. And today, it is the age of computer technology which lends itself to instant reporting with use of phones, recording devices, cameras, and other forms of mini-computers.
Catherine who has worked for Al Jazeera since 2008 and has covered Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, DR Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Central African Republic, Burundi, Tanzania, and Uganda has indeed gathered much experience but she still battles with certain anxieties in the course of her work.
She sets to work at covering events with some apprehension. She gets on edge over whether her tools are in order, whether she has the confidence and cooperation of her crew, including her production manager and her cameraman.
“Is my recording right? Will I find upon playing back that I didn’t get it right? These are some of the questions I often find myself asking,” Catherine said.
There is also always the doubt about what response she would get from her interviewees. Will she recieve the appropriate answers to her questions? On the other side is the issue of those of her headquarters’ response whom she mostly relates with via the satellite phone.
She also experiences some anxiety when she is trying to get a personality for a live question and answer session – to be the first to broadcast ahead of other competitors -which she says is usually tiring as the personalities are mostly short of time.
Yet, she has done well for herself and her medium, Al Jezeera, in the seven years she has been there reporting major stories in the wide region of her coverage, including Somalia’s elections and the recent assassination bid of the Somali president; the conflict between M23 rebels and the government in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well as South Sudan’s independence and the conflict between rebels and the government in Sudan’s Blue Nile region.
Cathrine was born and bred in Nairobi, Kenya and attended Mulango Girsl high School before she first started working about 10 years ago as an intern with Kenya Television Network (KTN), the first publicly run TV station in Kenya, owned by the Standard Group.
She became the features editor in KTN before she left in 2008 to work first as a producer with Aljazeera Arabic Television station, even though she did not speak Arabic, in Kenya and Somalia. She later joined Al Jazeera English as a reporter and she has been with them since then.
She said the main challenge with reporting for a local, as compared to international media outfit, is the need for the one with international medium to be more creative and more knowledgeable than the one with the local medium.
“To carry on successfully in my kind of media, you need to be really aggressive in planning, working, filing audio-visual and multimedia reports and follow-up of events considering other competitors,” she said.
She added that despite the challenges, she enjoys what she does, as working in an international media station means that she is covering the whole world and this motivates her to be up and doing.
Catherine said she is lucky to have been reporting crisis zones and has not come under cross fire. “I have not been as much as tear-gassed,” she said.
