Celebrating small victories

I've been living in Sierra Leone for nearly three months.

It's a little hard to believe. Before I know it, I'll be halfway through my JHR contract. And while some days have seemed interminably long and I've spent the occasional lunch wondering if I was getting through to anyone, looking at things in the larger perspective, it becomes clear that my colleagues and I have indeed been making some progress.

For example, when I started at Kalleone, the newspaper printed about one story of human rights or development news per week. By the time the paper went on hiatus for the festive season, the content ratio had skewed significantly more in favour of these articles, with the human rights and development niche occupying anywhere from two to four pages per issue (in a 12-page paper).

I think a couple stories from this past week aptly illustrate the methodical but nonetheless perceptible climb we're making up the mountain of media respectability.

Monday was the return to full operations at Kalleone, the blissful tomfoolery of Christmas and New Year's rapidly fading from view in our collective rearview mirror. It was also January 5th. And January 5th was the day they'd told me all along would be the station's re-launch. It was time to cast away the shackles of print in a largely illiterate society and take over the radio airwaves that form a sort of national religion.

I awoke uncharacteristically early, a mix of skepticism and excitement, and arrived at the station at 9 a.m. sharp (also uncharacteristic). The skepticism quickly beat the excitement into submission as it seemed painfully clear that our re-launch date would come and go not only without a return to news programming, but without even acknowledgement from any of the station's administration that the target date had been missed.

Finally, in the late afternoon, I received an explanatory text from John Conteh, Kalleone's station manager. Apparently, he was refusing to show up to the office "in protest of [his] boss' slugishness in giving us the equipment we need." A few more texts revealed that he was hopeful that everything would be resolved by morning and he would fill me in Tuesday afternoon.

It was disappointing, but not entirely surprising. After all, I was pretty confident no one had really been to the station with any frequency for the previous two weeks and I wasn't naive enough to believe the re-launch had been taking advantage of the silence to plan itself.

Meanwhile, Sheik and I were trying to finish up the story we'd been working on in the eastern border regions by getting an interview with a representative from the Ministry of Defence, which had a reputation for stoic silence when it came to press dealings, I was told by my colleagues.

We first showed up to the ministry's press office on Monday around 12:30 p.m., attempting to set up an interview. We were told that Colonel Milton, the press liason, was unavailable and we should return in an hour. Foolishly, I assumed this meant they expected him to be available in an hour.

In reality, it meant we were more than welcome to return promptly at 1:30 and sit unproductively for an hour before leaving a note requesting that the Colonel call us. We were assured he would. Neither Sheik nor I put much stock in this assurance.

So, 24 hours of non-response later, we were back at the office, and I couldn't help but notice the note we'd left was sitting untouched on the desk of the Colonel's assistant. We would not get to see the Colonel on this day either, nor would he answer either of his phones when I called. He did, however, have a note delivered to us that promised he'd pass my number onto the military spokesman. Filled with confidence, I made a mental note to come back again in 24 hours.

As we walked away from this third unsuccessful visit, Sheik launched into a now-familiar 'I told you so' routine that's popular among the Kalleone journalists. Whenever I work with a journalist and we encounter an unreasonable run-around in accessing sources, they begin to explain to me that "this is just how it is in Sierra Leone" and that's why they never do investigative reporting.

No matter what I say, I seem to labour to make my corresponding point - that I never doubted the very real challenges they faced, and I'm merely suggesting that a defeatist attitude, while understandable, is ultimately unproductive. My line of argumentation runs something like this:

"Yes, the reality of press access in Sierra Leone is abysmal. Governments try to avoid journalists, and that sucks. But it is the reality and will probably remain the reality, at least for the immediate future. As journalists, we have two options. We can lament the fact that we're not working in a more media-friendly environment and allow ourselves to be defeated. Or we can lament it, and work our asses off to make incremental positive change through exemplary reporting practices."

I choose the latter, and I think my colleagues are starting to believe that my choice is one worth aligning with. In fact, this little dance Sheik and I found ourselves engaged in with the Ministry of Defence was actually somewhat surreptitious. A couple weeks prior, I had run a workshop explicitly dedicated to gaining access to uncooperative sources, and this exercise was proving an excellent tool to put the theory into practice.

As we continually encountered non-cooperation at the Ministry, I referred back to one of the teaching tools from the workshop - that it was important to record your attempts to contact these sources, noting the date, time, and person(s) you speak with. Then, I explained, if they ultimately fail to comment after a reasonable opportunity has been given, you have every right to include their unwillingness in your report, and you have the evidence of your attempts to back it up should they angrily come calling.

After we again met with no help at the Ministry on Wednesday, Sheik and I composed a letter to be left for Colonel Milton, politely but firmly explaining that we'd delayed our story in an attempt to include their side of the story as long as we could and that, though we'd prefer to present a fair and balanced report with their comments represented, if we didn't hear from them by day's end, we would have to go to air without them.

This was another one of the tactics I'd outlined in my workshop. Colonel Milton called to schedule an interview within two hours of us exiting the Ministry.

He also happened to call in the middle of a news meeting, providing a perfect teaching opportunity to show not only Sheik but the whole staff that, with enough persistence, the system can be manipulated effectively.

Getting that interview felt like a victory, in much the same way that running that news meeting did; when I started at Kalleone, meetings were a rare case. We now have a daily schedule established and attendance is strong.

So, we had our Yenga story and I felt it would make a good centerpiece for the news re-launch, an angle that none of Freetown's other 50 or so media houses would have. The new re-launch date was Friday and, in a way, John's protest had worked. By Wednesday, the station had assigned five new recorders to the news staff.

Granted, none of them were digital, but that was kind of understandable given that digital recording technology could not be purchased anywhere in the country, at any price.

We weren't going to let that phase us, and John impressed me with his grasp of innovative ways to make the best of the technology. With a few simple cables and a reasonable understanding of Adobe Audition, we would be able to upload our interviews into a digital format and use quoted inserts in any story we pleased. That's all I could really hope for.

And so, this morning was one I awaited anxiously. Doubts again crept into my mind yesterday when John called in sick and I was forced to suppress my concerns in a faux show of confidence that the return of news programming to Kalleone was an inevitability that could be delayed no longer.

You see, I seem to have been thrust into somewhat of a mediator role at the station, representing the concerns of the reporters to their higher-ups, while simultaneously trying to temper their sometimes-unreasonable animosity towards management.

In many ways, I think everyone at Kalleone, if not within the Salone media more generally, has been worn down by the number of times they've allowed themselves to hope that progress was imminent, only to be disappointed. Jadedness has become the default setting.

But I haven't been around long enough to be jaded, and I think people are starting to notice that fact. Even though I'm technically the only member of our news team that's not employed by Kalleone, I was the first one in the office every day this week (save for Thursday, when I went directly to my day's assignment at a public briefing about a Yellow fever outbreak in Bo).

As Rugiatu, the terminally-shy intern who commutes from Lakka daily, headed home at 7 p.m. this evening, she noted that I always seemed to be the last one to leave the office too. I smiled, and informed her I'd be back in tomorrow morning if she was in the area and felt like dropping by.

Of course, this week hasn't been without its headaches. John didn't even arrive to the office until nearly 4 p.m. today and everyone turned to me for leadership in preparing a program that I'd never even heard. Stress ensued. In some ways, I was reminded of some of the particularly long Tuesday production days at The Cord last year.

But as the clock struck 7:30 and John, Abu Bakarr (the news presenter) and I hopped into a taxi and rushed up the hill to the studio, the newsman's adrenaline high made all the stress worthwhile. Pressed for time, we didn't get to pre-record the news updates as planned, and did it in a (much more thrilling) live take instead.

It was far from perfect. We ran into technical difficulties with the inserts (direct quotes/soundbytes). Editing scripts was an eye-opening lesson in the staff's fundamental failure to grasp the difference of writing for print and radio.

But damn it, on January 9, Kalleone had news. It was a first step and it felt good. And it was only four days after the initial goal, which, by Salone standards, is somewhat of a moral victory.

Witnessing it all come together has been a huge learning experience, giving me a point of reference from which to jump off as I structure my contributions going forward. Already, I've been inspired to lobby for a weekly half-hour segment explicitly dedicated to in-depth feature reporting that would nicely complement the just-launched news format.

And that is why, getting home 13 hours after I left this morning, having eaten only once all day and getting rear-ended in the cab drive home, a smile teased at my lips. With plans to head into work on a Saturday to add to my already-45-hour work week, it was a weary smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Some things never change, I guess.