Training is finished!

Remember: you can, and should, do it yourself! This was the final message for the volunteers before they became the official volunteer journalists for Jimma Mahebereseb Radio. At this very moment, the journalists are crowding in front of large papers on which they can fill in their program groups, their function within the group and, most important, the subject of the program. Of course there are already quite a lot of music programs, a talent show, a edutainment program, and more is not possible for me to read at this moment because everyone is standing in front of the paper.
This week is also the last week for solicitors to apply for the job of full-time journalist or manager. It really feels like we are handing over the studio to the people from Jimma. We hope that maybe one or two of the volunteers will be appointed as staff of the radio station since then they already know about the software and how everything
goes at the radio station. We will see...

Why does everything break?

A question that arises every once a while is ones life. This time time the reason for this throught was the fact that we were getting telephone calls that no-one was receiving the station on their radios. So we rushed to the transmitter to find that the forwarded power by the transmitter was almost zero, while it should be about 700 WATT. We were quite devastated by the fact that a brand new 5000 Euro transmitter broke within six months. The volunteers on the contrary were convinced that 'we will win', so with that spirit we've opened the transmitter but couldn't directly find the problem. We were happy that the end exciters didn't burn out completely. For some time we were thinking it was maybe a problem of too less current on the power net, but this wasn't the case. So we started e-mailing with the manufacturer in Italy. The procedure is like this: we describe what we see/measure, and they email us back with their conclusions and new point to measure. Today we probably found the problem: two broken transistors. But we are waiting for a reaction from Italy...

Tech Talk

Although some earlier posts about computer systems were not
appreciated by all, we are very proud to announce that all community
radio stations in Ethiopia will run on a Ubuntu Linux. To facilitate
this process well, we've packaged installations Cd's that can be
installed and the stations are ready to go: with the network, all the
audio editing and radio automation programs preconfigured. Even the
logging PC which holds the archive of everything that has been
broadcasted, runs completely automatic. It doesn't even need an
monitor. The idea is that the transmitter and this computer are
connected to one power source so that when the transmitter is switched
on, the computer starts to archive immediately. Every hour, the
program content is written to a file with name and date so if the
authorities might come, they can directly access the archive. Of
course this is also very useful for the database of the radio
stations, so that they only have to write in a sheet when there was a
program and about what it was, so it can be re-used if it is actual.
In the mean time also the first posters of the manual are printed and
the results are fabulous. We'll add one as an picture! When everything
is finished and tested, we will put it all online on this website.

Training 'em all

'Why is there no double click for the right mouse button?', 'Is it allowed to use local words on the radio?', just two questions on normal training day. it's about three weeks ago that the training commenced, and it's been busy. the studio is like a bee-hive of volunteers coming in and out at almost every time of the day.
The volunteers are trained in groups of twelve in interviewing, audio editing, rules and regulations and script writing. Every training subject has new talents and people who need extra attention. Imagine yourself a class of which at least half of the people never touched a computer before. But after two hours of explanation and practicing, they are actually audio editing. here, the young people are clearly taking the lead in picking things up quickly.

Every week there is an assignment which will lead to an complete radio item at the end of the training. So everything the volunteers learn, will be put directly into practice. In the first practical lessons, the creative usage of the voice, the elderly are clearly in advantage because they have no problem with singing, screaming and 'crying' in front of a group. It takes some time before all the people get rid of their shame. And there are some things that will be difficult for quite some time. Paying respect is very important in certain relations, i.e young-old, female-male, everyone-higher official. This makes it difficult for people to evaluate each other radio items, or to cut people of if they give rubbish answers (or just answers which are way too long) with interviews.

But that also popped some questions with us: is the short-cut, fast-edited and pre-scripted radio program as we are used to it in the Netherlands and other countries in 'the west', the perfect radio program for every condition? It's hard to say. A senior producer at the BBC talked about the bad quality of Ethiopian radio in general, but is it in the eye of the Ethiopian?

There are some things that one should respect and that everyone should learn. But maybe those thing belong more to journalistic ethics then plain journalism, such as: a strive for objectivity, balanced reporting (always let all the parties have their say), and completeness.

These thing seem clear for our trainees, but there are some other things that are much more difficult. For instance: making program attractive to listen to. There is a common opinion that says: if information is serious, you cannot make jokes. Jokes also include creative use of the voice. So that means, from the moment you touch on something serious such as HIV/Aids, women rights, etc etc, the voice gets monotonous.

But it's great to see the people grow in their roles. The shy Muslim girls who came in very quiet are now laughing and singing with children in the children's program, and the cleaner-technician is handling the mixer as if she never did something else before!

So despite some obstacles, everything is going really fine and we are extremely happy and proud of all of our journalists and employees who are doing a great job.