NTV is now more famous for its news captions than the actual news. All this is thanks to one junior technician who has turned the fortunes of the broadcasting giant.
Francis Omondi holds only a certificate in IT from a college somewhere in the 7th floor of a building along Tom Mboya street. His dream education path was to study and acquire a Master’s Degree in Diction and Soft Puns from Makerere University but as you know, we all have such dreams which we have to forget about and focus on putting food on the table.
It is with this certificate and the usual connections that got him a job as an IT support Intern at Nation Center. This is the place where his unique talent has thrived, and funny enough, it came by accident.
Killer Captions
Contrary to popular thinking that Omondi spends all his time thinking of catchy phrases and killer one liners to use as captions, the guy’s main role is that of a technician who repairs computers and printers. He spends his time at the Nation Center running from one office to another helping workers plug in their ethernet cables and reminding officers that the reason their screen does not show anything is because it is not switched on. Coming up with captions is simply a side hustle of his job description.
Usually, Omondi checks through news items during his tea or lunch break and during the rest of the day, good captions simply show up in his head . He carries a notebook and pen which he uses to jot now the ideas as they come because his volatile mind never retains any useless information for more than 2.6 seconds.
“By the end of the day, I usually have many possible captions which NTV can use but only a few are necessary. Unfortunately, you will never see most of these because I am not even on Tweeter and I do not share them.”
Why the Pun?
We spent a lunch break with Francis and we wanted to find out the motivation behind the killer captions. From his talk, it is clear that this is a man who was designed for word play.
“I am serious about words because sometimes everything is simply about words, even words. You are probably familiar with the man who sent a short text message (then called telegram) and missed a delicate comma, resulting to loss of millions of shillings. In another case, it is a matter of life and death.”
“Consider the following:
Let’s eat grandma.
Vs
Let’s eat, grandma.
In the above case, you will notice that it is the comma that saves a life.”
At some point during the interview, he almost went out of control with his words, telling us how farting in an elevator is wrong on so many levels, how alcohol is always a solution and how chemistry jokes get little reaction. Clearly, he is a man who puts his mouth where his money is.
Generally, he is a good guy (because he also reads PostaMate).
No Promotion Yet
Has his newly found ‘usefulness’ gotten him a promotion? Certainly not. Francis is still repairing printers and asking users to ‘restart your computer first.’
But this is very understandable. The management at NTV is afraid that if he is given more money, he will lose his content and creativity. “You know the close relationship between poverty and creativity. We are afraid of losing him to money, so we would rather have him doing his work under the old condition. A day will come when he will hit the jackpot, but for now the status quo of poverty and puns will remain.”