So last week we (mainly Bill) were training reporters in Jinja. At a break, one of them pulled us to the side of the building to show us a loaded mango tree. They were knocking at the hanging mangoes with a long stick - the mangoes would fall to the ground and they'd scoop them up, bite into them and pull the sticky mango meat off the skin, then spit out the peel. And ... ah ... they were in heaven. And they handed us fresh mangoes off the tree, we peeled them a bit with our fingernails, and ate, cutting big bites with our teeth up against the pit. Our faces were smeared with orange mango, our fingers dripping, and it was wonderful! For the rest of the day our hands smelled of wonderful mango. And now all our Ugandan friends say, "You ate mango off the tree?" and they get all mushy because that's how they grew up in the villages.
Later, Bill answered questions under yet another mango tree, surrounded by reporters and
editors. One of the reporters asked about whether he should have asked to have his name withheld from a story during the war in the north. He said he wrote about dogs eating the remains of the 300 villagers massacred and was afraid the rebels or the army would come after him. Bill said, it depends, but it's best to use your name, everyone knew it was you anyway. He agreed. Another editor told a recent story of two reporters who went to a town in the Karamajong area, where they were reporting on something unpopular with the locals. The people saw their notebooks and threatened to lynch them (a serious threat, since lynchings are common, as are stonings). So one reporter took his notes into the latrine and photographed them with a small camera, then hid the camera. He figured maybe the notes would be recovered somehow. They didn't lynch the reporters - but they took their notes, and he later wrote a story from the photographed notes.
So we looked at each other. We don't have this kind of journalistic experience - at all! Who are we to tell them to be accurate, write interesting leads, organize their stories so they are readable? We feel like mangoes hanging on the tree - a little sweet, inadvertent, and mainly innocent.
Later, Bill answered questions under yet another mango tree, surrounded by reporters and
editors. One of the reporters asked about whether he should have asked to have his name withheld from a story during the war in the north. He said he wrote about dogs eating the remains of the 300 villagers massacred and was afraid the rebels or the army would come after him. Bill said, it depends, but it's best to use your name, everyone knew it was you anyway. He agreed. Another editor told a recent story of two reporters who went to a town in the Karamajong area, where they were reporting on something unpopular with the locals. The people saw their notebooks and threatened to lynch them (a serious threat, since lynchings are common, as are stonings). So one reporter took his notes into the latrine and photographed them with a small camera, then hid the camera. He figured maybe the notes would be recovered somehow. They didn't lynch the reporters - but they took their notes, and he later wrote a story from the photographed notes.So we looked at each other. We don't have this kind of journalistic experience - at all! Who are we to tell them to be accurate, write interesting leads, organize their stories so they are readable? We feel like mangoes hanging on the tree - a little sweet, inadvertent, and mainly innocent.
2 comments:
i enjoyed this. the ingenuity of the reporter who photgraphed his notes, and your juxtaposition of the enjoyment of mangoes to how you were to later feel like mangoes hanging off the tree --i loved it all!
Re-tuning into your blog and reading multiple posts in bulk... amazing experiences! This post struck me for the same reasons as "cb." Sounds like the journalism lessons go both ways. Amazing that the journalist photographed the notes. And I love your mango metaphor... nicely written!
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