While there, she produced this two-minute video about a day in the life of a jhr trainer, specifically her colleague, Danny Glenwright.
I figured I'd share this because it's a pretty well put-together and concise look at essentially the role I played while in Sierra Leone, although every trainer's experience is unique and I worked in radio, not print.
It was also a little hit of nostalgia, as the video features an interview with my Country Director, Elvis Gbanabom Hallowell, at Stop Press, the restaurant where I held some of my workshops. In addition, Glenwright worked at the Concord Times newspaper, the same media house that hosted my roommates Bryna and Kevin, and which I visited on a couple occasions. There are some recognizable faces among the journalists featured, such as the perpetually friendly Ibrahim Tarawallie, who gets significant screen time around the 0:35 mark.
Interestingly, this is the first time I've laid eyes on Glenwright, and he looks nothing like I expected. In the lead-up to my interview with jhr, I devoured everything Glenwright wrote on the jhr site, most of which has been taken down as the site has evolved.
I found his blend of stubborn optimism and engaging prose uniquely inspiring. I still recall one post in particular that detailed all the difficulties encountered in covering the 2007 local elections, including the theft of his camera, yet ended with the statement, "There's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be right now."
Danny was also kind enough to answer my questions - some of which were on point, and some of which were hilariously naive in retrospect - before my interview and departure. After watching this video, I read back on some of our correspondence. Here is just one example of his responses:
Me: It seems to me that one difficulty in reporting in general in Sierra Leone is in impressing the importance of timely reporting. Is this a fair observation? Acknowledging that the infrastructure in SL newsrooms isn't reliable enough to ensure as stable a production cycle as we're accustomed to in the West, what steps do you think are most feasible for furthering the progress of getting papers distributed with relevant, up-to-date reporting?
Danny: Yep, you're dead-on here. It's incredibly difficult to adjust to this. Deadlines? What's that? This aspect of the job frustrated me from day one. Eventually you have to adapt. I found I tried to meet my colleagues somewhere in the middle.
Here's the thing: you will quickly learn, once on the ground, that there's a reason why things are so slow. Traffic jams take hours, business hours are unreliable, electricity and generators are unreliable, interviews fall through, printers break, politicians are ALWAYS late, everyone is always late, timelines and deadlines are very tough to keep.
That said, there is also a culture of laziness and passing the buck. As much as I often acknowledged outside reasons why things were slow, I also tried to draw attention to the other 'inside' reasons why they didn't have to be. It's a balancing act and it's tough not to succumb to the lethargy that daily attacks the newsroom.
In the end, I think I was able to communicate that 'news' means something that is new and therefore it has to be timely and we shouldn't be sitting around the newsroom until midnight every day. Overall, it's a tough call. Salone is a very different pace of life than we're used to and it's a huge adjustment. Everyone approaches it differently and I don't think it pays to get mad or impose our way of doing things there. It doesn't work for many reasons. You have to compromise. Good luck.
The words seemed insightful then and continue to resonate 11 months later. Were it not for Danny taking the time to give thoughtful, detailed responses to my questions, I imagine I wouldn't have been prepared to adapt to Salone as well as I feel I did. I like to think I paid that forward to the crew that came in after me. Either way, a sincere thanks to Mr. Danny Glenwright is clearly in order.
