Sam Soi is a fourth year student in Moi University’s main campus. He is a younger
brother to Anne Soi Mwendia, a popular Kenyan presenter currently working for BBC Africa.
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| Sam Soi, a media student |
As a media student,
Sam knows that a day will come when he, like his sister, will probably be
expected to in front of a camera or sit behind a microphone and talk to the
world.
Like
any other wise person, he believes in early preparations as an important tool
for one’s success. This explains why he is always under pressure to adopt a
better accent than his indigenous one. Since his first year of study in the
School of Information Sciences, Sam has been struggling to synchronize his voice
in a bid to ‘speak like a European’. Has he succeeded?
Four
years down the line, the aspiring presenter is still struggling. In fact, the
struggle seems to get tougher with time. Whenever he speaks, during a class presentation for instance, Sam usually begins well, with a real English accent
within the first two or three sentences. However, his perceived ‘wonderful’
accent disappears in the subsequent sentences, slowly fading into his original
Kalenjin one.
Rumors
have it that his sister Anne secured him internship at K24 Television Station
during the last 9-months long holiday, a chance the boy allegedly declined for
no good reason. Could it be due to lack of confidence? Perhaps he thought that
his adoptive accent was still not near perfection.
Time
is running fast. With only a few months to graduation, Sam is apparently in dilemma. What will happen if, after studies, he secures employment at a time
when he is yet to perfect his preferred style of talking? And maybe that time
he will also have forgotten his old accent. How then will he speak?
