Ultra-modern media centre for scribes covering Safari Rally

While history will be written on the torturous Naivasha terrain, the stories behind the most challenging World Rally Championship (WRC) Safari Rally will be churned from a state-of-the-art media centre at Naivasha's Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Institute.

Measuring about 1,000 meters square and about 20 meters high, the Main Media Centre (MDC) will be a vibrant hub serving nearly 100 accredited journalists, who will be based at the site during the four- day showpiece, which revs off Thursday.

The media teams from around the world, who have so far reported at he KWS institute are from France, Uganda, Belgium, United Kingdom (UK), Ireland, Portugal, Poland and hosts Kenya.

Among the first journalists to take over their desks at the centre were France's Yasuyoshi Chiba, Uganda's Haula Kiotnsa, Kenneth Waswa, an online journalist, Belgium's Stefan Dejenaru, United Kingdom's Geoff Mayes and Kleinmanns, Ireland's Ben Johnson, Poland's Julian Obrocki and Portugal's Renato Luis.

Also on board is the FIA Media delegate Vera Dussausaye and Miguel Fonseca, who are making sure everything is moving according to schedule.

"The media centre is marvellous. I like the accreditation and Wi-Fi connectivity is just fast and is making my work easy to file stories to my home country Uganda," said Waswa.

WRC Rally team have been trained to work on-site, where the facilities include an accreditation centre, that has four massive smart Television sets which keep the journalists updated.

Fondu Nzovu is in charge of the media centre and is assisted by Wairimu Nyathira, Margaret Wanjiru and Jimmy Kimathi.

"After a lot of work, the time has come to put into practice everything that we have planned for," says Nzovu. "We are all very excited," he added.

There is also a special room for photojournalists where they can upload their images and send them in real-time to their respective media houses and online publications thanks to the fast Wi-Fi connectivity. 

Canon Professional Service is offering service to accredited photojournalists by giving them high-end cameras worth Sh20million to assist them to get the best images.

He said the service centre will come in handy for the next four days to photojournalists who may not have high-quality cameras.

"This is the first time Canon is offering such a service to photograher and as a freelance photographer, I'm happy WRC Safari Rally is back on home soil and budding photographers will have a rare opportunity and have the right and best gear to make them deliver high-quality images to various media houses across the country," said a photojournalist from Kenya.

"The service by Canon will add value to my work. I will for the first time use a high-end camera and assorted lenses worth more than Sh20million," said another photojournalist.

"From here, beautiful stories will travel across the world," said Elias Makori, theWRC Safari Rally  National Press officer.

"Stories about how drivers achieved their dreams. Stories about torturous terrain in Naivasha and how world champions drivers like seven-time world rally champion Sebastien Ogier and the 2019 world champion Ott Tanak tackled the Naivasha terrain.

Stories about how local drivers like Onkar Rai, Baldev Chager and young and upcoming drivers like Andrew Wanyoike and Linet Ayuko among others made Kenya proud will be made from this magnificent media centre," said Makori, who is also the Nation Media Group Sports Editor.