Starting a Radio Station in Rwanda
here's a little column I just finished about my 2-week stint in Rwanda in November.
12 Days, 26 Journalism (and radio) Neophytes, 3 MD recorders, a station in boxes and intermittent electricity
or
“How we got Radio Salus on the air”
Yup, that was the scenario (more or less…probably less, really) when I arrived in Butare, Rwanda just a couple weeks ago. The mission? To train a group of students who would then be working at the university’s new radio station (which was not yet on the air). At least that’s what I thought the mission was.
I quickly came to realize how wrong I was and how much more this “mission” was going to be. I soon learned most of the students had just completed their first year of university – primarily gen ed classes and no journalism to speak of. The 8 recorders I had expected turned out to be 3, the electricity seemed to be more shaky than when I was in country last in 2003 and the station? Well….
Shortly after I arrived I visited the station “house”. There were some 20 people toiling in the gardens, clearing weeds and unwanted plants…beautifying the garden. But where, I wanted to scream, where the people we needed to do the wiring, install the gear and get us on the air???
By day 2 I realized the countdown had begun. The launch date had been set for Friday November 18. And the countdown left me with 10 days. How was I going to train these mostly first-year students with no studio, barely any gear and electricity that seemed to keep going out when I needed it most?
I will remember the nights in my room working until both my computer battery and the candles had finished for the night. It was like some medieval time when it was black as black outside, the odd laughter bouncing off the hills and the lack of power and light forcing me to finally call it a night and get a few hours of sleep until the crows jumping up and down on the tin roof woke me the next morning.
While my first three days passed without power, at least I could take a hot shower.
For 12 days I tried hard not to think about the daunting task ahead of me, daring only to take one day at a time and to “not look down” as one friend would say. Oh, and did I mention that we had only one computer (in addition to my laptop which too often was dead as I couldn’t recharge the battery) on which to edit?
Over the course of those 12 days I can’t even remember how many pep talks I gave, how many admonitions escaped my lips and how many times I looked to the heavens for any possible help they were willing to give me.
In addition to technical challenges there was also what seemed to me a constant lack (is that an oxymoron?) of communication. One example: I had found a computer science student willing to build the station a website for a rock bottom price. He made a deal with the station manager and then I saw him on Day 9. He wanted to show me what he’d done. I stared at him. Apparently the manager had not communicated with him the fact that the university wanted all sites standardized and thus we couldn’t build our own site. The manager had discovered this after he had asked this student to design our site yet he hadn’t bothered to tell the student this. I was furious.
So on Day 9 I lost it. Yes, four days to launch and I lost it. I had worked till close to 11pm the night before; a string of students had shown up at my hotel room to edit. Finally, I just couldn’t see straight, let alone think straight. I asked them to leave. The next morning I took my time going in. I felt I was getting nothing back from the students (who also were frustrated with the lack of equipment), had not yet received a dime from UNESCO and basically felt I’d hit the wall….or the mountain, if you will.
So I was exhausted, frustrated, sad, angry and yes, maybe a bit stressed. I went in purposely late to make a point. Though in hindsight I’m not sure what my point was. I told them they needed to take responsibility and not constantly blame others for “problems” (a word I now officially loathe), that they needed to solve these “problems”, that I was fed up and that I was this close to getting on a plane and going home. Then I left.
And maybe that’s what they needed. Everybody just left me alone that day and when I went in the following day they seemed ready to get started.
We spent the next three days working on jingles, sending the students out into the field to begin work on their various programs and ironing out the 16-hour a day programming schedule. Yes, that’s right….16 hours a day with some 25 people that have little, if any, experience. And 3 mini-disc recorders.
The launch went off without a hitch on the 18th. I had done my little rain/sun dance that morning to ask the rains to please begin and end before the ceremony. The gods complied.
The launch was well attended -- the Rwandan Minister of Information came, as did the university rector and vice-rectors, Kigali bank bigwigs, reps from several embassies including the US Embassy. And of course the students were there. And we were covering the launch live…on Radio Salus.
We received calls from as far away as Ruhengeri in the northwest of the country. We received so many calls, in fact, that I sent someone out to go buy a phone so at least we could answer all the calls without putting them all on the air (we had some engineering glitches that needed to be ironed out).
I have received news that the station continues to be on the air 16 hours a day though perhaps not respecting the program schedule we had put together. I guess it is possible to perform miracles.
P.S. For those of you who remember my dispatch about the genocide orphan family of Alphonsina and her brothers, well, I tracked them down again. Alphonsina is alive, married and living in Nyanza with her new husband and third child. The youngest boy, Ariwanda, who was living with HiV two years ago, succumbed to the disease earlier this year. He was twelve. I found the two other boys living on their own, barefoot and in tattered clothes and living in the same house that I found them in two years ago. Their greetings this time around were clearly more restrained than they’d been in the past. Bariwanda, now the youngest at 15 but looking like 10, came bounding up the cliff/hill. I grabbed him and clung to him. He clung back. How incredibly un-Rwandan to cling like that. I desperately tried hard to hold the tears welling in my eyes. It never ceases to amaze me that with a simple twist of fate that could have been me living in that house.
I and my two Rwandan friends I’d brought with me chatted with the boys for a while and then took Bariwanda to the market. For $60 we bought them shoes, clothes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, cups, plates, a couple spoons and loads and loads of food. Close to two hours later, car trunk packed with supplies we went back, dropped off the supplies, convinced the boys they needed an education, explaining to them that it looked like we had found someone willing to help with costs and we left after more long hugs.
or
“How we got Radio Salus on the air”
Yup, that was the scenario (more or less…probably less, really) when I arrived in Butare, Rwanda just a couple weeks ago. The mission? To train a group of students who would then be working at the university’s new radio station (which was not yet on the air). At least that’s what I thought the mission was.
I quickly came to realize how wrong I was and how much more this “mission” was going to be. I soon learned most of the students had just completed their first year of university – primarily gen ed classes and no journalism to speak of. The 8 recorders I had expected turned out to be 3, the electricity seemed to be more shaky than when I was in country last in 2003 and the station? Well….
Shortly after I arrived I visited the station “house”. There were some 20 people toiling in the gardens, clearing weeds and unwanted plants…beautifying the garden. But where, I wanted to scream, where the people we needed to do the wiring, install the gear and get us on the air???
By day 2 I realized the countdown had begun. The launch date had been set for Friday November 18. And the countdown left me with 10 days. How was I going to train these mostly first-year students with no studio, barely any gear and electricity that seemed to keep going out when I needed it most?
I will remember the nights in my room working until both my computer battery and the candles had finished for the night. It was like some medieval time when it was black as black outside, the odd laughter bouncing off the hills and the lack of power and light forcing me to finally call it a night and get a few hours of sleep until the crows jumping up and down on the tin roof woke me the next morning.
While my first three days passed without power, at least I could take a hot shower.
For 12 days I tried hard not to think about the daunting task ahead of me, daring only to take one day at a time and to “not look down” as one friend would say. Oh, and did I mention that we had only one computer (in addition to my laptop which too often was dead as I couldn’t recharge the battery) on which to edit?
Over the course of those 12 days I can’t even remember how many pep talks I gave, how many admonitions escaped my lips and how many times I looked to the heavens for any possible help they were willing to give me.
In addition to technical challenges there was also what seemed to me a constant lack (is that an oxymoron?) of communication. One example: I had found a computer science student willing to build the station a website for a rock bottom price. He made a deal with the station manager and then I saw him on Day 9. He wanted to show me what he’d done. I stared at him. Apparently the manager had not communicated with him the fact that the university wanted all sites standardized and thus we couldn’t build our own site. The manager had discovered this after he had asked this student to design our site yet he hadn’t bothered to tell the student this. I was furious.
So on Day 9 I lost it. Yes, four days to launch and I lost it. I had worked till close to 11pm the night before; a string of students had shown up at my hotel room to edit. Finally, I just couldn’t see straight, let alone think straight. I asked them to leave. The next morning I took my time going in. I felt I was getting nothing back from the students (who also were frustrated with the lack of equipment), had not yet received a dime from UNESCO and basically felt I’d hit the wall….or the mountain, if you will.
So I was exhausted, frustrated, sad, angry and yes, maybe a bit stressed. I went in purposely late to make a point. Though in hindsight I’m not sure what my point was. I told them they needed to take responsibility and not constantly blame others for “problems” (a word I now officially loathe), that they needed to solve these “problems”, that I was fed up and that I was this close to getting on a plane and going home. Then I left.
And maybe that’s what they needed. Everybody just left me alone that day and when I went in the following day they seemed ready to get started.
We spent the next three days working on jingles, sending the students out into the field to begin work on their various programs and ironing out the 16-hour a day programming schedule. Yes, that’s right….16 hours a day with some 25 people that have little, if any, experience. And 3 mini-disc recorders.
The launch went off without a hitch on the 18th. I had done my little rain/sun dance that morning to ask the rains to please begin and end before the ceremony. The gods complied.
The launch was well attended -- the Rwandan Minister of Information came, as did the university rector and vice-rectors, Kigali bank bigwigs, reps from several embassies including the US Embassy. And of course the students were there. And we were covering the launch live…on Radio Salus.
We received calls from as far away as Ruhengeri in the northwest of the country. We received so many calls, in fact, that I sent someone out to go buy a phone so at least we could answer all the calls without putting them all on the air (we had some engineering glitches that needed to be ironed out).
I have received news that the station continues to be on the air 16 hours a day though perhaps not respecting the program schedule we had put together. I guess it is possible to perform miracles.
P.S. For those of you who remember my dispatch about the genocide orphan family of Alphonsina and her brothers, well, I tracked them down again. Alphonsina is alive, married and living in Nyanza with her new husband and third child. The youngest boy, Ariwanda, who was living with HiV two years ago, succumbed to the disease earlier this year. He was twelve. I found the two other boys living on their own, barefoot and in tattered clothes and living in the same house that I found them in two years ago. Their greetings this time around were clearly more restrained than they’d been in the past. Bariwanda, now the youngest at 15 but looking like 10, came bounding up the cliff/hill. I grabbed him and clung to him. He clung back. How incredibly un-Rwandan to cling like that. I desperately tried hard to hold the tears welling in my eyes. It never ceases to amaze me that with a simple twist of fate that could have been me living in that house.
I and my two Rwandan friends I’d brought with me chatted with the boys for a while and then took Bariwanda to the market. For $60 we bought them shoes, clothes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, cups, plates, a couple spoons and loads and loads of food. Close to two hours later, car trunk packed with supplies we went back, dropped off the supplies, convinced the boys they needed an education, explaining to them that it looked like we had found someone willing to help with costs and we left after more long hugs.
posted by Michelle @ 3:36 AM
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