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