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Inside stories by the wazee: Francis Rafiki (Nation 16)




By FARAJ DUMILA
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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