We are happy to present you the documents to round up the involvment of Mediaction in the Jimma Mahebereseb Radio project: our annual report and our balance sheet.

Mediaction has no direct plans for new projects on the short term but we are happy to help you with support for Open Source Software in community radio settings. For other questions, support and comments you are still very welcome to email us at: info {at} mediactionfoundation.org .

two short documentaries on Jimma Mahebereseb Radio

Free Media in the Horn of Africa: Four Short Documentaries and a Debate

The Horn of Africa is a particularly difficult area for free media to survive; they're enduring repression but also war, famine and extreme poverty. We want to examine different initiatives who work in Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan. They all have a different approach in creating and supporting free media. We'll have a discussion on different techniques, ways of working with local population and the government under difficult circumstances. But we don't want to restrict ourselves to talking. Some of the initiatives will present themselves in short documentaries so that you'll get a deeper feeling and greater understanding for the local context. We would like to invite you to participate and critically celebrate press freedom.
Press Now, Radio Darfur, Radio Negarit, Mediaction, Ghetto Radio
Language: English
Admission free
Start: 20:30
Location: De Balie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, Amsterdam

Back in the Netherland | Guide is downloadable

After one and a half year we are back in the Netherlands, and we really have to say we are enjoying the fast internet, ice-skating and filled up book stores as much as we are missing Ethiopia for the people and its warmth.

But fortunately there is enough work to do here to keep us running around. The first version of the community radio manual is now available in English by clicking this link, the Amharic version is nearing its completion. We are working with UNESCO and ICTAD to get the printed versions out soon.
The radiostation seems to be doing very well without us. We have almost daily email contact with our technician Gezahegne. There were some minor problems with the state radio station Fana which started its transmission with an incredible 2000 Watt transmission on all FM frequencies. And thus jamming Jimare. Fortunately, the broadcasting authority acted quickly and Fana is of-air for maintenance now and Jimare can be heard again on the known 102 MHZ.We see the coming of Fana as a healthy but also potentially dangerous development for Jimma. One the one hand is a diversity of media very important for a healthy cultural environment, but one the other hand it could deepen the political dichotomy since Fana is still the radio station of the ruling EPDRF party. Weĺl see how it goes. What we now for now is that when Fana was sending on all frequencies, Jimare got a lot of phone calls with complaints about the fact that they were sending religious and political content. Luckily the community is listening well and is taking its responsibility.

In the mean time are busy writing the annual report and finishing the two documentaries that where filmed by John Treffer. Together we are editing the last things and producing the voice overs. The films and the annual report will be made available on this website as soon as they are finished.The next effort will be to simplify the Linux installation for community radios and to create a website with updates for newer Ubuntu versions, since this version in running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. And a good download and community spot for people working in (community-)radio and who are interested in open source.

As you see, there is enough to be done in the year to come.

PS If you´ve downloaded the guide and want to install the computers with Ubuntu, please send us an email and I will send you the necessary CD by mail, or if you have a good internet connect, I will make them available on the internet. Right now we're perfecting the CD.

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.

If one envisions putting up a radio station in Ethiopia, one would probably think of soldering, lots of wires and training. This was also our idea when we went to Ethiopia, one year ago. And at last, we've reached that point. At this moment we are training sixty volunteers from the community in different aspects of radio.
It's not that meetings aren't important, nor that the work for the past year has been dull, but we now finally really get to work with our target group: the people from the Jimma Community, who are enthusiastic about radio, about creating their own medium, to tell and to listen to their own stories.
Unfortunately, we haven't been able to employ new journalists or a manager yet, which means that our technician, Ghezeghne, is currently working seven days a week to do the broadcasts. Between the programs he also trains the volunteers. Ghezeghne proves himself to be a great technician, and one can see that he used to be a teacher before.
There are now three subgroups to be trained: technicians, afaan oromo journalists and amharic journalists. The first group finished their training on audio editing and mobile recording and are momentarily working on their assignments, which brings a lot of life to the radio station. All the computers our now being used for a large part of the day and the newsroom is starting to get that chaotic feel; nice.

After a leave of two months we are back in Ethiopia.

The rainy season is on its top here and the roads are sticky and full of mud. In the car to Jimma the other passengers already inform us about the ' excellent broadcasting of the radiostation. Everyone seems to know about its existence, the only complaint is that they don't broadcast as much hours as they would like them to.

Optimistic but also with a bit of doubt and fear of what we will see when getting back we arrive in Jimma.

We are welcomed enthusiastic by our friends and colleagues and within a few hours we have sucked ourselves in the work again as our clean dutch shoes are shoes are sucked into the sticky mud of he dirt roads of Jimma.

A lot changed at the station, most of it for the good although some problems have also arised. Let us list it shortly:


- The studio is finished: new electricity lines are placed, finally the double glass between the studio and the newsroom is in place, everything is painted:


Photo 1: The newsroom, you can see the studio through the window, the double doors make the studio sound-proof. In the corner you can see the secretary Tigist.

The house of the guard is finished, the studio is fully equipped and working, and at this moment about ten people are outside working on the garden of the station:



Photo 2: The garden of the radio station, the gardeners are taking a shelter at the new guard house.

The radio is functioning: it is broadcasting three times a day, two hours in the early morning (between 6:45 and 8:45) one hour at lunchtime and two hours at night when people get home from work. At this moment they are only broadcasting music and the jingle of Jimare. It is great to be able to tune in at 102.0 FM and hear 'our' radiostation!



Photo 3: Gezagehegne, the technician, is broadcasting music from the radio studio.

- There is an ongoing conflict between the board of the radiostation (who represent the community and who are the official owner of the station) and the Jimma University (who gives the station a sustainable backbone by paying for the employees and taking the responsibility for the studio and the running costs of the station). In our eyes this conflict is mostly a lack of trust in each other and a powerstruggle due to unclearity/disagreement of the functions of both parties. This conflict is getting worse and is fought over the heads of the employees.

- The conflict between the board and the JU has created a lot of uncertainty for the employees. This seems to have been one of the main reasons for the two journalists to leave the radiostation and go back to their former work. Two weeks ago the studio manager followed them and also left.

- One studio to transmitter link (STL) is broken so that we cannot use the teletower but from a small tower near the studio. The consequence is that we are transmitting only for 20 kilometres instead of a radius of 75 kilometres.



Especially the sudden leave of the employees was a step back. Although the technician, the secretary and the volunteers are taking over in an excellent way, we need more people to run the station. We think that the first thing that needs to be done now, is to enhance the communication between the board and the JU and to resolve the conflicts going on. We can directly make use of he skills we learned at the peacebuilding and
conflictresolution- training we had in the Netherlands. After that we can start recruiting new personnel. The next step will be the training of volunteers and to enhance the amount of hours of broadcasting and the amount of people we reach.

It’s been a while since we have last updated this blog. But now that we are back in the Netherlands it is easier to follow up because we can access the the blogsites again. Weblogs are made inaccessible in Ethiopia because it is found to hard to control what people write on it. In a country that keeps so much control over media, it was a big thing for us as well as the Ethiopians to get the broadcast license for community radio. Jimare (Amharic for -‘the starting point’ and abbreviation of Jimma Community Radio) independent radio station in
Ethiopia.

Picture: The community meeting on which we got the license from the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority

Apart from being the first in Ethiopia, this radio station will be the first FM radio to be heard in Jimma and surroundings. Being a pioneer is nice and sounds ‘cool’ but is also difficult. A whole new mind-set needs to be built and we have to start from scratch in every step we take. It is hard work, and we can not learn from others in Ethiopia. We do use a lot of readers and books about community radio that are produced in other developing countries, which help us a lot in decision making and developing training materials.

After celebrating the license we could start getting the equipment from customs (which was there already for a few weeks). This took some time, some stamps and many letters but finally everything came through. We also almost finished the studio space: after a long, very long, procedure of purchasing the building materials, now all the double walls are filled with sound isolating styrofoam, and a 1 by 2 meter window is now placed between the newsroom and the studio.

Picture: The Radio studio still under contruction, between the walls you see styrofoam for sound isolation, double doors and double glass are not yet placed on this picture.

At the same time we still had to employ one of the most important employees: the daily manager of the studio. After three announcements (of which one in the national newspaper), a lot of meetings and about 30 applications, we found 4 candidates that fitted the needs of all involved parties in the selection procedure. Finally one was anonymously chosen to be our new heart of the station, a former radio Ethiopia manager with a diploma in media management.
This new manager was joining the four other employees now: our technician, two journalists and a secretary. They are really becoming a close hard working team now, which is very nice to see.

Another important thing we had to do before our temporary leave, was getting all people involved at the radio station trained before going on air. We have been in contact with many professionals in the field working in Ethiopia, including BBC World Service Trust, Internews, GTZ, PFMA, DED and ZFD. With them we have organized different trainings for our employees, board members and trainers. There was a basic journalism training by Internews, a management and community radio training by the Ethiopian PFMA and a Linux-training by GTZ. In the coming year BBC WST, the ZFD, GTZ and Internews will continue training to Jimare. We are very thankful for all the help we are getting.

Picture: Training on the concept of community radio to the board, the employees and the trainers

At this moment there are already three other community radio stations that have a license for community radio. About ten others are in their preparation to get the license. We hope that Jimare can function as a training centre for these community radio stations. We have gathered a lot of knowledge and experience the last months that we think can be very useful for other starting radio stations. We have also trained 8 trainers who are now training the volunteer journalists from the community. These trainers could also train the volunteers of other stations. We are now working together with the organizations mentioned before, to make a community radio manual and training scheme that can be used all over Ethiopia. All in order to spread community radio and
spread knowledge and democracy.

We will return to Ethiopia in the beginning of July. We will than work on the training centre, the spread of the windup radio's and extra training (especially on ethics and conflict resolution on the radio).

Picture: The wind-up radios that we are going to disseminate in Jimma and surroundings

The radio has gone on air for testing yesterday! May 21stwill be the official opening of the radio station. So a lot of things are happening in Jimma in our absence, we think that is a good sign!

While the dutch (and the doors) are waiting for the sun, Ethiopia is waiting for the rain. Rain is a sign of fertility. When it rains, things will turn out well. That is why the Ethiopians have a saying that when it rains at the beginning of a project or a relationship, it will give it fertile soil to grow on.
Usually the rainy season in this area will start in February. But up 'till now it has been dry and hot. People in the south of Ethiopia are dying and also in the evergreen Jimma dust is taking over.
We have been waiting for the license the last months as hopeful and disparate as the farmers have been waiting for the rain. And yesterday was the day that would give us clarity.
Yesterday the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority (EBA) came to Jimma to assess the work done. They wanted to talk to 500-800 members of the community, to the board, the president of the Jimma University, the mayor and the employees of the radio station and get some last documents. This would be the final step to get the broadcasting license that we have been working for for 7 months now.
After a stressful week of preparation in which we sometimes thought that everything would end up in one big disaster, everything seemed to be organized.
We invited about 2000 people on Saturday morning 8:30 in the biggest meeting hall in Jimma. We expected that from these 2000, 500-800 would come. But they didn't. Al least, nut until 10:00 when we where very very nervous.
At that time the hall was stuffed with people. Young, old, male, female, rich, poor, handicapped, yes even the deaf inhabitants of Jimma came to fight for community radio!
A lot of speeches by higher officials followed. After that it was the turn of the community to talk. And they did talk. They told them EBA how much they needed the radio station for social en economical change but also just for the fact that they needed a medium that was not controlled by the government. A medium that was their own. They complained about the time it was taking to get the license. And told them they wanted the license NOW. The EBA seemed to be amazed a bit shocked but also impressed.
They said a lot in response that we didn' t understand because it was all in Amharic. But one thing we did understand: 102.0 FM.

Jimare 102.0 FM!

There was a big applause.
Last night heavy rains started.

Organizing a community radio station: The Employees

It's not essential for a community radio station to have employees, but it is necessary to have people who are committed to the bone. And since 80% of the community radios have seiced to exist within two years we thought it was important to have some stable factors in the radio station. We just employed three of them: two journalists and one technician. We thought a lot on how we would employ them, since the radio station has no money yet. But the Jimma University, who is helping this project a lot, was ready to pay for their salaries. Of course we thought a long time about this because the university is a semi-government institution, and since this is the first community radio station, it could be sensitive. But together we came up with a construction in which the independence of the station would be guarded, the JU will sponsor us monthly and the board allocates the money to he salaries.

After announcing the vacancies hundreds of people applied not only to be employed as a journalist or a technician, but also to serve the station as a volunteer. In cooperation with a group of experts, we selected the best journalists and technicians. To be sure that the process went as clean as a whistle we first conducted a test on them, the persons that past the test were interviewed. All the people of the employment committee could fill in points on different characteristics and in the end all the points were added. The problem was that the women underperformed, so our equality principle kind of backfired on us. Now we hope we can take a female intern, since a workplace without women is not a good example for a radio station which claims to work on women empowerment.

Organizing a community radio station: The Board

A community radio is owned and organized by the community, but it's hard to have a meeting with the whole community at the same time. You can try, but probably you will have a problem to even hear yourself talking. That is why the Jimma community decided that the community would choose a general assembly to represent them. The general assembly voted for by 25.000 people, and this general assembly voted, a from amongst themselves, a board. Luckily, the board exists of a lot of different people, from different religions, different sexes, from different areas, and from different social economic backgrounds. So the varied community of Jimma is well represented. The problem is, these ten people also find it sometimes hard to agree. Therefore the board members have long discussions and a lot of meetings that are sometimes very difficult. But now we see that they seem to grow more in their roles every meeting. They get more focused on their communal goal instead of their individual differences. By getting this to work in the board, we also hope to encourage such discussion and understanding of common ground in the community at large.

Free and Open-Source Software for Free Radio III: Radio Automation

One could argue if radio automation is necessary for a community radio station, but at least one could say that it is functional to have if you want to professionalize more. Radio automation used to be a process controlled by a huge machine, but now it's only a piece of software. It takes care of the news, advertisements and 'stations calls' automatically
on given times, every hour or when you push the button. It's also used to play out music or programs in the times that there are no people in the studio. What is nice about this is that news is repeated until 'new news' is produced, advertisements are played out as often a promised and when there was a power failure, the radio will be back online in no-time. Radio
automation is available under Linux. Campcaster and Rivendell both offer an integrated radio automation program for radio station. Campcaster is more suitable for smaller radio stations and Rivendell is capable of very complicated and advanced actions. Campcaster is also widely used by community radio stations in Kenya and is based on 'playlists'. You can select playlists to be played every hour, every half hour or between every other playlist. You can also play a playlist in a playlist, this means that you can make an item which someone made as a playlist part of your program. It's really easy and has a nice interface. Another bonus is that you use it from your webbrowser, if the server is connected to the internet you can organize your program even from abroad! Only internet connectivity is necessary for this option.

www.campware.org
www.rivendellaudio.org

Free and Open-Source Software for Free Radio II: Audio Editing

In our last post we already mentioned the cost-effective reasons to use Linux and FOSS. But we haven't really given much attention to the quality of the audio editing programs. There is a big choice in Ubuntu and if you want to find the program of your choice, you'll just have to try a lot.
There a few key player: audacity is a cross-platform program, so you could also use it under Mac OSx or Windows. It's really easy to use it is a good introduction to sound editing. If you are used to Pro Tools, this is your alternative. It's a really nice program with a lot of bells and whistles, that's why it's maybe not so suitable for new users. So we chose to install both these programs, one for the beginner and one for the more advanced producer.

www.ardour.org

www.audacity.sourceforge.org

Free and Open-Source Software for Free Radio I: Operating System

There are a few things that you can say about a community radio stations in general. They are poor and always short of technical staff. What has this got to do with Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS)? The answer is: a lot. FOSS is not only free as in 'freedom' or 'free-speech', a essential part of community radio, but it is also free as in 'free beer'. No expensive licenses have to be bought, no upgrades have to be paid, and one doesn't have to work with crappy, illegal copies, so for this problem, FOSS seem to be a good alternative for community radio. But then the next problem, the lack of technical staff: everyone thinks FOSS is difficult to operate. People know mostly the operating system Linux and think of the scary command prompt. But Linux has changed over the years with the free online distribution of Ubuntu Linux (see: Ubuntu.com). The interface is really nice and 'feels' a lot like working on a Macintosh (interface is the part of a computer program that you see and with which you interact).

There are also other Ubuntu flavours with different interfaces, so is the the XFCE interface for slow PC's (Xubuntu), and KDE interface which look a bit more like windows (Kubuntu). Especially for lower education and the 'one pc per child' project Edubuntu was developed with interface and programs directed at young children.

So Linux seem to have changed into a good alternative for Mac and Windows, but it has another option which is very useful for beginning user environments: permissions. When you login with your username and password you are granted certain permissions. A normal user has access to his/her own directory and programs which are assigned to him/her. He/she has no option to delete system files or change system settings. The only place where this user can do harm is in his/her own directory!

Another important reason for us to use Linux is that is not affected by viruses, even if viruses are opened from an attachment.

These were our reason to look at Ubuntu, in the next post we'll reveal the broad horizons FOSS opens for audio editing and radio automation.

www.ubuntu.org
www.gnu.org

Press Now

Since the beginning of this this project, when this radio station only an idea, we got help from Press Now. Press Now helped us with critical questions, tough remarks, and great advice.
They did not try to save us here, they were realistic and critical. Now, almost a year after our first contact Press Now decided they wanted to help the project also financially. They will help us to buy portable recorders for the radio station (the zoom H4), and wind-up radio's, actually the same as the US army spreads in Iraq (the KA-009), and by financing training.

Because Press Now will also post these messages on a blog on their website, this blog will be in English from now on.

Oplossingen en problemen door oplossingen



We hebben al eerder geschreven over de vrouwen die het hout dragen. We hebben nu zitten brainstormen met verschillende belangengroepen en we zijn tot de conclusie gekomen dat alles eigenlijk altijd gecompliceerder is dan het lijkt. Dat geldt eigenlijk niet alleen maar voor dit probleem, maar voor velen. Een goed voorbeeld is de Gigel Gibe dam die hier gebouwd is, nou ja,ze zijn er eigenlijk nog steeds mee bezig. Maar er is een groot stuwmeer, een pijn van 25 kilometer waar water doorheen dendert, en er wordt electriciteit opgewekt. Dat wordt nog meer als ze de andere trappen afgemaakt hebben. Maar door de enorme erosie verstopt de dam. Als ze over tien jaar uiteindelijk klaar zijn met de laatste fase is de dam waarschijnlijk verstopt. En een stuwdam uitbaggeren is eigenlijk net zo duur als het bouwen van een dergelijk object.
De stuwdam is betaald met een lening van de wereldbank, en de inschatting is, dat als de dam verstopt raakt, er vast weer een donor komt die helpt met het ontstoppen van de dam. Uit onderzoek van verschillende belgische universiteiten blijkt dat herbeplanten veel van deze erosie tegen zou gaan, maar hier wordt niet in geinvesteerd.
Dan nu weer terug naar de vrouwen die hout dragen. Als wij hen gaan helpen met zich organiseren, het aanschaffen van een kar met ezel, of iets van die strekking, zetten we de eerste stappen in het industrialiseren van de ontbossing. Er zal dus eerst een herbebossingscampagne aan vooraf moeten gaan. Maar help je die vrouwen dan nog werkelijk?

Counseling op de radio




Terwijl in Nederland discussies zijn over een 'psychologisering van de samenleving' is in heel Ethiopie geen psycholoog te vinden. Het dichtst bij klinische psychologie komt de studentenpsycholoog die vooral voorziet in goede adviezen bij studieproblemen. Juist door het tekort aan psychologische hulp in Ethiopie valt er op straat een boel te diagnosticeren; tics, wanen, hallucinaties, obsessief compulsieve stoornissen, ze wonen hier op straat en zijn niet opgeloten in instituten. Maar ook verslaving (zie het stukje over khat), trauma, depressie en seksuele problemen zijn hier, helaas, net als in Nederland aan de orde van de dag. Daarnaast zijn er natuurlijk een groot aantal HIV-positieven die psychologische hulp behoeven. In Addis is er voor hen een 'hotline' geopend. Een soort telefonische hulpdienst voor mensen met HIV/AIDS. Deze lijn was binnen no-time overbelast. Na uitbreiding bellen er nu tienduizenden mensen per dag, enkel uit addis. Geinspireerd door deze hotline en mijn werk bij de kindertelefoon ben ik met de counselors van de studenten gaan praten en zijn we tot het idee gekomen van een radioprogramma met een counselor in de studio. Deze counselor zal telefonische hulpvragen en brieven op de radio behandelen. Het is dus een inbelprogramma. Dit programma genaamd 'this is my concern' wordt twee keer per week uitgezonden, een keer in het Amhaars en een keer in het Afaan Oromo. We zijn nu bezig met het voorbereiden van een training die in combinatie met de het inbelprogramma voor artsen gegeven gaat worden. De pychologie waren zelfs zo enthousiast dat ze hier in Jimma zelf een hulplijn willen starten voor de nazorg na de uitzending, maar daar wachten we voorlopig nog even mee, laten we eerst dit maar eens stabiel draaiende krijgen.