How my wedding forced Parliament to adjourn

Parliament sessions have been adjourned for various reasons, but rarely is it because someone is about to wed. Well, it happened in September, 1968.

On this day, 52 years ago, the East African Standard ran a story about a woman whose forthcoming wedding and subsequent honeymoon had forced Kenya’s National Assembly to adjourn for two weeks.

“She is Miss Patricia Mugo, aged 23, a member of the National Assembly’s hard-working team of Hansard reporters,” the newspaper wrote. “Her wedding — a week tomorrow — to Lt. Washington Mwangi in St Andrew’s Church, Nairobi, and her ensuing fortnight’s honeymoon in Mombasa, caused a crisis in the Hansard staff situation,” it added.

The report went on to describe how staff shortage at the assembly’s Hansard team (the staff who convert oral proceedings into typed text) necessitated a halt in the chamber’s proceedings with Patricia’s planned departure.

Five decades later, she is Mrs Patricia Mwangi, a 75-year-old mother of two who is widowed, her husband having died in 1990, leaving her with their two daughters — one who is a Hansard reporter at the Nairobi County Assembly.

Mrs Mwangi laughs a lot. And she is still in the business of typing and editing what people say in formal meetings. One of her past major undertakings is being the head of the Hansard department at the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (CKRC) that set the pace for the 2010 Constitution. She also worked with the Panel of Eminent African Personalities that helped de-escalate tensions in Kenya following the disputed 2007 General Election.

Constitutional commissions

Today, she is attached to one of the constitutional commissions, which she did not disclose in an interview with the Sunday Nation yesterday. “They always call me when they want verbatim reports. And I have a team of transcribers who are very dedicated that I use to produce the reports,” she said.

She flashed back to that moment when proceedings of the National Assembly were halted for the sake of her nuptials.

“I was one of two Africans (in the Hansard team) and they just made a big issue about it: You know, the members wanted to know. They were just making fun,” she recalled. “Anyway, the Speaker (Mr Humphrey Slade) decided that the only solution was to adjourn Parliament for at least two weeks because I was getting married the week after I appeared in the paper and then I was going for my honeymoon for two weeks,” she added.

That time, staff at the Hansard team had resigned en-masse, leaving only a lean team that Mrs Mwangi often came in to support. A member of the team went on leave and that meant that if Mrs Mwangi was not available, the team left could not cope with the workload.

Hansard reporting was not an easy undertaking then, and insiders say it still isn’t easy today. The reporters have to type every word spoken by every contributor and have the material ready the next day.

“We would work until 3am most times. So, if one person was not there, we were really stretched,” said Mrs Mwangi.

“We had to finish and have the report ready for the next day ... for members to check to see if what we had written is what they had said,” she added.

A reporter currently attached to the National Assembly’s Hansard team told the Sunday Nation that even today, the pressure exists. Current standing orders say a transcript of utterances in the assembly has to be ready in 48 hours unless the Speaker issues an exemption. “Many are the days we leave the workplace at 1am,” said the reporter.

By the time Mrs Mwangi re-joined the Hansard team, the employee who was on leave had returned. She, however, did not serve for too long before resigning. Having given birth to her first child in 1969, and given the long working hours, she had no option but quit.

Daytime job

“The sort of times we used to work was difficult with a young family, so I wanted a daytime job,” she said.

That meant that her engagement with the National Assembly that started in 1965 had to abate just three years in. Her other daughter was born in 1972. “After ‘72, I started seeking secretarial type of jobs. I worked for several firms, like Kenya Power and Lighting. I also worked for several private companies,” she said. “Then my husband went for a course in the United States for one year so we all went and came back. And after he came back is when I started doing Hansard work again.”

So, what are some of her memorable moments as a Hansard reporter? She says it was when she was just getting into the job and there was a boundary demarcation exercise. “We travelled all over the country getting views from the people, and that was like my first reporting at the job,” she recalled. Laughing, she added: “It was my first time to fly in a helicopter.”

Plenary sessions during those early years of independent Kenya were also fiery, and some are etched in her memory. “It used to be very interesting and very enjoyable especially when members are throwing light remarks at each other,” she said.

Recording gadgets back then were bulky, she recalls. The main mode of recording National Assembly proceedings worked with cinema-type reels that were compacted into bulky tapes.

A person could take a recording of 10 minutes and head to the transcription desk as another one took charge of the next 10 or so minutes, and so on.

Our contact at the National Assembly said the practice, which banks on a master tape to record the entire session continuously as reporters take smaller bits, continues to date.

Typing machines

Mrs Mwangi has seen typing machines evolve from the bulky and noisy typewriters to quieter, more efficient electronics.

“Yes, I’m very good,” she said when asked whether she knows her way around computer typing. “Except that these days I’ve got a bit of arthritis. It has hampered me. But as for the other jobs — editing Hansard reports, recording and all that — I am good.”

“They don’t want just anybody to get into their meeting room,” she said. “I’ve earned their trust and they call me and ask me go report, produce the reports, and then I edit them then make sure that the final copy is good to be presented to the commission.”

This business requires a good command of the English language and she believes she has just that.

Her husband, Mr Mwangi, was a Kenya Air Force navigator, the person who assists the pilot find his way around. Around the time of their wedding, Mr Mwangi was also in the news after having come second in the East African Air Safari Rally.

The Daily Nation highlighted Mr Mwangi’s heroics in the “Today in History” segment of September 15 and that is how Mrs Mwangi’s friends reached out and they thought it was the right time for her to have this interview.

“I think it was just coincidence (that both of us were in the news),” said Mrs Mwangi, laughing. Her husband died of cancer in 1990, having retired holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Her eldest daughter also chose to do what she has been doing.

“She’s very good. She works in the Nairobi County Assembly,” said Mrs Mwangi. She also added that there is a considerable market in the field of transcribing meetings, now that Kenya also has county governments.

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