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.