Your girls on the news: Farida Nakazibwe

We get to the table that we have settled for, at the poolside of Serena Hotel, and I hastily pull out a chair and sit. Faridah Nakazibwe carefully pulls out hers too and sits, straight, placing her two phones on the table, and her hands, fingers crisscrossed, on her lap. Her stare is constant. When she speaks, her tone is a soft one. She occasionally takes the hands off her lap, but only to stress a point.

Nakazibwe is a humble lady, as humble in person as she appears on television. I break the ice by complimenting her for being smart. “Oh, thank you,” she replies, with a warm smile.

When the waitress approaches us to take our orders, she quickly informs her that we’ll place them later. The look on the waitresses’ face suggests that she is about to tell Nakazibwe something along the line of; “I am sorry ma’am, it is the hotel’s policy to place your order immediately after sitting” but instead, she mumbles; “sure, no problem.”

I’m convinced that it is that “something” about Nakazibwe’s husky voice that has weakened the waitress’s will to insist that we place our orders first.

Good voice, bad voice?
She acknowledges, without bragging, about the fact that people applaud her for her voice. However, at the start of Nakazibwe’s career in broadcast journalism, she was rejected for a role as a news anchor because of the same voice. “A month after completing my undergraduate degree, I walked into the leading television station at the time. I wanted to be a news anchor. To my disappointment, I was told that my voice was bad. But, I was taken on as a reporter,” she tells me.

Two years later, NTV came on board. Nakaziibwe applied to be either a news reporter or editor, although what she really wanted to do was anchor. “I had grown to believe that my voice was not good enough,” she explains.

When her appointment letter came in a few days later, however, she had been appointed as a news anchor! “My emotions were a mixture of excitement and surprise. It was my dream role,” she says. She accepted the job, saying it offered better than what my employers at the time was offering her, and today, she is the main news anchor of NTV Ku Ssaawa Emu, airing every Friday to Sunday, between 7 pm and 7:30pm.

Oh, she speaks good English
I have heard a person or two say that they wished to hear Nakazibwe speak English. Perhaps they doubt she can speak it well. To you my friends, Nakazibwe speaks good English, in an equally good unaffected accent. We used English for the better part of the interview. “I anchor Luganda and not English because that is what I was offered,” she explains.

Of role models, she says the anchors she looked up to were those she watched on UTV (as UBC was called then). Francis Bbale, Lucy Banya and Toya Kilama were her favourites. She admired the way they spoke and the authority they commanded. Growing up in Masaka district, she admits to never having much access to international television channels. Lately, on the international scene, she looks up to Al Jazeera’s Veronica Pedrosa. In Uganda, she looks up to her colleagues, Frank Walusimbi and Nancy Kacungira. “I admire Walusimbi’s rich vocabulary in the Luganda language. I’m also reading as much Luganda literature as I can get my hands on,” she says.

I choose the point when she is still laughing at my attempt to impress her with a Luganda tongue twister to ask one question on the slippery side. Were rumours in tabloids some time back about her feuding with fellow anchor Pamela Nalugwa (now Hatma Ssekaya) over their only male colleague Walusimbi true? And then there was the story about her being one of the celebrities looking for love on Facebook. “All those are baseless and unfounded rumours. I usually laugh off such stories. Unfortunately, some people believe them. It is sad that the publishers of those tabloids never think about the damage their irresponsibility can cause one’s family and future aspirations,” she says, unaffectedly.

The relationship issue
She says she is in a relationship and is a mother of two girls, aged six and three. She refuses to go into details on grounds of unwillingness to interfere with her partner’s privacy and her own. We switch topics, and eventually end up discussing what it takes to be like her.

Nakazibwe’s advice, especially to fresh graduates, is humility, listening to mentors or supervisors, and good manners. “I didn’t know much when I started out, but I was very eager to learn from my mentors. I also worked hard to improve areas where I was weak. There is no successful person I know who started from the top. Even physics states that we start from the bottom. Let them take a step at a time,” she concludes.

One-on-one
Who chooses what you wear on screen?
Myself. The company sets the standards of what I can wear before the camera but I do my own shopping.

Which other career would you attempt?
Law. However, in court, I’d only represent a person whose rights have been violated. I’d realise this by verifying the person’s facts, before appearing for them in court.

How would you describe yourself?
I’m shy, caring and hardworking, a loving mother of two gorgeous girls, and a responsible citizen.

How do you spend your free time?
I love watching movies. Love stories especially those acted by African Americans, are my favourites. I also go to theatre to watch a play or comedy.

What has been your greatest achievement in your career?
Being in a position where people look up to you. Not everyone gets the chance of being called a role model. I feel blessed that there are people who see me as such.

And the lowest moment?
My transition from my former job to NTV was not a smooth one. Actually, a time came when I felt like I would not make it. But I thank the Almighty that he saw me through that phase.

Nakazibwe in the next five years?
I will still be on TV, God-willing, possibly with a bigger family than I have today. I hope to have established a business of my own in preparation for retirement.

What would you like your legacy to be?
I want to be remembered as that lady who did not only read news, but changed the way it used to be done in Uganda. One who made people like both the news and the presenter, not just one of the two.

Factfile:
Education: Bwala Boarding Primary School, Taibah High School, and Kawempe Secondary School. Islamic University in Uganda-Mbale campus, for a degree in Mass Communication. My dad wanted me to pursue a degree in education but I managed to convince him that journalism is what was good for me. Unfortunately, he died while I was in my first year at campus.

Family: I’m the second born in a family of eight born to the late Hajj Shakib Ssenyonjo and Hajat Sarah Ssenyonjo.

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