"They fall, and falling they are given wings."

April 27, 2007

The Sufi poet Rumi has a wonderful poem about learning to fly by falling. You grow wings because you have to.

This week, I threw my 4th year journalism and communications class over a cliff.

“Your final assignment,” I told them, “is to produce a television documentary.” I held up a newspaper headline that talked about how they, the students at the National University of Rwanda, live under “appalling” conditions. It was more tabloid than truth, but I thought it was a good subject matter to get the students airborne.

If they failed, no matter. If they succeeded, they would brush against glory.

Eleven pairs of eyes looked at me expectantly. “We have three days to complete this,” I told them. “You will do all the work yourselves. Videotaping. Interviewing. Writing. Producing. Editing. Your deadline is Friday. Okay, how long should our documentary be?”

“Twenty minutes,” said Bernard. He’s fearless.

Whoa! Flying is one thing. But 20 minutes is supersonic. “Why don’t we go for eight minutes?” I said. “Even that’s an awful long time on television, where you measure in seconds.”

I looked out at them. Maybe three students had ever handled a digital camera. Four of them had some limited TV news experience. One had reasonable editing skills. Was I asking too much? Of course I was. That’s one of the sadistic privileges of teaching.

I said the project needed a producer and asked for volunteers. After a full minute, Jean-Pierre tentatively raised his hand. He wasn’t sure what a producer did, but it sounded like an interesting challenge. Jean-Pierre edits the student newspaper. He had delegation skills. He’ll do fine.

I divided them up into five teams of two. Team 1 would look at the bland student cafeteria food. Team 2 would investigate the scarcity of student housing. Team 3 would look at student bursaries (chronically late). Team 4 would pursue the Science student who had organized the survey that produced the story. And Team 5 would go after the university administration.

Over the next few hours, a half-dozen other students wandered into class, in that infuriatingly careless, casual way that many Rwandan students adopt. It’s a disregard for the clock that won’t serve them well as journalists later in life, but I’ve learned to roll with it. I told them to check in with their fellow students, and assign themselves to one or another of the teams.

We came up with a title: “Ibibazo: Inside Campus.” Ibibazo is Kinyarwanda for “problems.” We discussed whom they would interview. We drew up lists of questions. I gave them a 10-minute crash course on the use of the digital camera. Automatic and manual focus. Framing. Don’t shoot into light. Proper use of microphones. How to shoot sequences—wide, medium and tight shots. Cutaways. The importance of natural sound. “And listen, don’t talk while you are recording, because the camera will pick up your voices and it will ruin the ambient sound.”

They were anxious to get going. “Three more things. And these are REALLY important! Whoever is using the camera MUST wear headphones, so you know you’re getting sound. Second, use a tripod. We don’t want any shaky-cam. And third, and this is really really important, bring back lots of close-ups.”

Two hours later, they began straggling back. I slipped their tapes into the player. The first tape had absolutely no sound. I glared at Jean-Bosco, the cameraman, and he gave me a sheepish grin. “Wrong audio channel,” he said. In fact, he’d disobeyed the mandatory headphone rule. The next tape was a study in cinematographic epilepsy—constant undirected movement. (The crew forgot the tripod.) The third tape was a dizzying sequence of pans, zooms and tilts, the kind of thing you expect in Uncle Fred’s home movie, but not on television There was also a lot of their own chatter on the audio track.

Things were getting ugly. But I counted to 10 and followed the Golden Rule of Pedagogy: Don’t break their hearts before they’ve had a chance to learn something. I looked for something positive in their work, and found it: On all the tapes, the novice filmmakers showed enthusiasm (and some skill) in the “standup,” in which the reporter looks into the camera and says something profound. I complimented them on their camera presence, and sent them back out to re-shoot everything they’d done. And I put a little steel into the spine of the producer, Jean-Pierre. “Headphones, tripod, close-ups. And no talking while the cameras are rolling” I told him. “Make sure they remember.”

Over the next 24 hours, things began to happen. Emmanuel and Bernard came back with some inspired videotape illustrating cramped student housing—four men to a room, leaky bathroom plumbing. Other teams came back with some quite vivid student interviews, mostly in English, full of passion. The camerawork was steadier, the sound was good, even the framing began to show real imagination. And there was one extraordinary tape, shot in the campus cafeteria kitchen, with scenes that might have been lifted from Dante’s Purgatorio. I’m exaggerating, of course, but after their first efforts, this was like gold. Jean-Pierre was clearly putting on some pressure.

Neville, a particularly quiet student, showed a natural talent in front of the camera. He had no nerves, and he hit his standup on the first “take.” As for scriptwriting, I found a fluent writer: Ritah. She produced crisp, short sentences in a hurry, and wasn’t intimidated by deadlines. And Jean-Emmanuel showed a lot of promise in his interviews: he kept repeating his questions until he got the answer he wanted.

They shot a total of 10 hours of tape, and I said enough. The story was edited by a committee of three. In charge of editing was the unflappable Emmanuel Mungwarakarama who, over 13 hours, overcame computer crashes, power failures, audio problems, and a blizzard of technical glitches that would have driven most North American editors mad. He was a resolute titan who carried the project on his shoulders. I fought back the urge for editorial intervention. This had to be their work, their voices. No time for muzungu (white man) management.

“Ibibazo: Inside Campus,” a story of student life in Rwanda, will never make Cannes or Sundance. It’s choppy, there are too many different voices, there is no original music. It was produced with unreliable equipment, and has no post-production glitz.

But I think it’s fine. Remembering Rumi, I look closely at the students on camera, and I think I can see something. They’re not flying yet, but with at least three or four of them, I can see the first telltale signs of avian evolution. They’re growing wings.

Common Threads that Blind & Bind Us

April 22, 2007

All my life, I’ve been struggling against Traveler’s Myopia. It’s a common ailment. We think that globetrotting makes us smart; then, we land in a so-called “exotic” place, and we are surprised to find that the people are so very much like us, with many of the same impulses, dreams, dilemmas and sensitivities.

Last week, I returned from lunch to my classroom at the National University in Butare, and discovered on the blackboard a message of condolences to those Americans whose lives were shattered by the gunman on the campus of Virginia Tech. It stopped me in my tracks.

I’m guessing that one of the 4th year journalism and communications students—I never found out who—had taken the time to write the heartfelt message, in English. (The word “tech” was misspelled—a clue that the author was probably not one of the foreign teachers.)

I’ll be honest. I was initially surprised because, in my bonehead ex-pat fashion, I had imagined that two or three dozen violent deaths in a country far far away wouldn’t really register here. After all, this is genocide country: It’s a rare week when someone doesn’t discover another grave of anonymous Rwandans killed and hastily buried 13 years ago. Surely, I imagine, the survivors here are hardened to this kind of thing.

Wrong.

The students were transfixed by the reports on Sky News and CNN that come in by satellite to the campus TV room; they were shocked by the contents of the gunman’s video diary, fascinated by the tabloid tone of the coverage.

In the Broadcast Writing class that followed, we talked about emotionalism in reporting—good or bad?—and we discussed the propriety of repeatedly airing the “suicide tape.” (Most of the students felt it was a mistake to show the tape over and over again, but they were split fairly evenly on the question of emotionality.)

Later that day, I told the students to organize themselves into teams of two, and to come up with ideas for video stories that they would be producing over the coming week. Once again they set me back on my heels. I expected that at least a handful of story themes would touch on subjects related to Rwanda’s post-genocidal experience. The reconciliation between victims and victimizers, maybe, or the government’s ongoing battle against “genocidal ideology.”

But again I was wrong. The things the students came up with were things that would preoccupy students anywhere, whether the campus is in Butare, Berlin, or Burnaby, B.C. “The cafeteria food is awful,” said one team. “How can we live when bursaries are delayed almost every month?” said another. “There’s a new gymnastics club in town, just for women,” said a third. “Student housing is hopelessly inadequate,” said a fourth. Only one story idea even remotely touched on what happened in 1994. “The local football team has a chance to make first place in the national league for the first time since the genocide,” said Richard, who reports regularly for Rwandan TV.

Why should I have been surprised? They’ve lived half their lives in post-genocidal Rwanda. Like university students everywhere, their careers are in fast-forward. They look ahead, not back. There are immediate things to worry about, things they are in a position to do something about.

Later, over a cold Mutzig beer at the Ibis Hotel, a handful of students joined me and we talked about the highs and lows of working as young broadcast journalists in Rwanda. They were candid about the things that bothered them: an editorial line that was unfailingly pro-government, the long hours, the low pay, the lack of reliable equipment. But by the second round of drinks, the mood shifted. After all, these were young men, they were smart and adaptable, and they believed they could cope with almost anything. No, rather than complain, they wanted to talk about the things they liked about the job, its personal rewards.

“I did a report for the news on holes in the city streets,” one of them said. “Two days later, while walking to work, I saw the work crews on the streets, fixing the holes. I think my story may have made a difference. That made me happy.”

One small story. One small victory. It’s an equation of personal achievement that means the same in any time zone, any country, any hemisphere.

Newswriting as Conversation

April 18, 2007

“Tell me a story. Dites moi une histoire.”

I am hoping this will be the icebreaker in my opening class of a weeklong broadcast writing seminar. But the eight 4th-year journalism and communication students at the National University of Rwanda shift uneasily. They are not yet ready for that level of intimacy, even though we are crammed into a tiny classroom with barely enough room for eight rickety chairs, a desk and a blackboard.

“All right,” I say, after a long pause. “Maybe the stories will come later.”

The two Emmanuels, Richard, Jean-Pierre, Christine, Jean de Dieu, Theogene, and Donozius, seem visibly relieved as I go back to my lecture, and they to their note-taking.

Storytelling, I tell them, is at the heart of broadcast writing, especially when your subject is human interest. And we all tell stories every day, stories with a clear theme, characters, structure, flow. The stories come naturally, with a beginning, middle and end, succinct, and there are no wasted words. We are all born storytellers; with a little practice, we can turn this natural skill into effective broadcast writing.

Pause.

“C’mon, try it,” I said. “En Anglais ou Francais, either language.” I can see a wealth of stories behind those faces; all of them lived through the 1994 genocide, one of the most harrowing events in modern history. But it’s still too early.

I tell them about storytelling as community building. We share stories, discover what we have in common, draw closer together, feel more secure. Broadcast journalists, if they do their job right, help create a national dialogue, a conversation of collective citizenship. I turn to the blackboard and, with the brittle chalk crumbling in my fingers, scratch out the famous quote from Longfellow: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostilities.” I explain that we, as journalists, are here to uncover those “secret histories,” to reframe them and to send them out into the world.

One of the Emmanuels raises his hand. “What is ‘hostilities’?” he asks.

And so the day goes. We critique stories from the nightly TV Rwanda newscast, I have them write scripts, they struggle bravely with English syntax, I remind them to keep their sentences short. And every once in a while, I try to coax them to tell me a story “just so you can see the structure.”

The breakthrough does not come until the end of the second day. We are discussing a story I am researching, a story that deals with post-genocide reconciliation in Rwanda—of victims embracing their tormentors. I remark that some of the stories I’ve come across have an almost “miraculous” aspect.

That’s when I see that Theogene (nicknamed “Toto”) has his hand up. “I heard a story. I don’t know if it’s a miracle, but it’s true.”

His classmates lean forward to listen. “In the town of Byumba,” Toto begins, “there were two families living side by side. When the genocide started, the father of one family went into the house of the other family, and killed everybody. The only survivors were a boy and his sister.

“After the genocide, the man went to prison. He confessed, and after some years he was released. He went back to the house of his neighbors, and he saw the surviving boy, who was now a young man. And he asked forgiveness. After a time, the young man forgave him. But the old man was not sure. He didn’t believe he was really forgiven. So he went back to the young man, and said: I will believe that you forgive me, but you must do something to prove it. I need a symbol. You must marry my daughter.”

Theogene stops. He looks at our faces and savors our anticipation. He has come upon a first principle of successful storytelling: the dramatic pause.

“They were married,” he said. “And they are still married. They moved away, but they come back now and then to visit the old man.”

There is a collective sigh in the classroom, and other stories pour out.

We are learning.

Memorials: Social & Political Processes

April 13, 2007

My dining companion at the La Fiesta Mexican restaurant, in the Kimihurura district of Kigali, was visibly agitated, and her distress had nothing to do with the food. I asked her what was wrong. She said: “Can’t you hear the music?” I could. It was a mariachi band.

“Should I tell the owner to turn it down?” I offered.

My companion, a Rwandan woman, shook her head. “Doesn’t he realize it’s genocide memorial week?” With that, she left the table and went looking for the owner. Moments later, the mariachi music was gone, replaced by an FM radio station playing solemn music.

The owner was lucky. People playing inappropriate music in the second week of April, whether in a restaurant, or at a child’s birthday party, risk the wrath of neighbors, the seizure of the offending radio, even arrest if police decide to make a case of it. Restaurants have reportedly even been shut down when the management was deemed to show disrespect. Nightclubs and discos do virtually no business in memorial week.

It’s a very special time in Rwanda, by decree. The trauma of the human catastrophe that left nearly a million dead is still raw after 13 years, so raw that people here are highly sensitive to even the slightest lapse of decorum.

A few days ago, for example, a Kigali man tied purple bandannas—the national symbol of mourning—around the necks of his dogs, in memory of pets he had apparently lost in the genocide. Outraged neighbors demanded his arrest, and Rwanda’s national newspaper editorialized that the man should be detained until he came to his senses. There’s a law on the books against “trivializing” the genocide.

Students at the National University in Butare and elsewhere are relieved of all out-of-class assignments during the memorial period, and teachers may not grade any of their work. This is meant to encourage the students to spend their free time reflecting on the genocide, its victims and its consequences. And they do just that. Almost daily there are marches somewhere in Rwanda, to commemorate a particular massacre, or to excoriate the international community for turning its back on Rwanda in 1994.

At night in downtown Butare, and other cities and towns, survivors sit around giant bonfires, sharing stories about their experiences 13 years ago. Meanwhile, you can’t turn on the state-owned TV Rwanda, or open the inside pages of the New Times, without being overwhelmed by genocide-related features with the recurring theme: we must uproot any trace of “genocidal ideology.”

Yesterday, I visited the main genocide memorial site in Kigali, a building that is now easily accessible thanks to a new road paid for by the Chinese government. It was jammed with Rwandans and visitors filing through the exhibits. In a darkened room containing skulls and bones, a soft voice recited the names of men, women and children who were slaughtered. The roll call of the dead created a profound mood; a woman overcome with grief fell to the floor, wailing and crying.

Outside, people sat in benches around an eternal flame, deep in thought. It’s as if the nation is still struggling to come out from under shadow of the “Jenoside.”

A period of annual national mourning is, of course, a laudable and even necessary thing. Still, what I saw left me a bit uneasy. As South African scholar Susan E. Cook notes in her paper "The Politics of Preservation in Rwanda," such memorials are politically-loaded. The Kigali museum contains a videotape clip in which a young Rwandan woman, a survivor, says that 90 per cent of Hutus were “evil” during the genocide. No mention of the measure of reconciliation between the two groups in the last decade. And no mention of the killing of substantial numbers of Hutus before, during and after the genocide.

In a country determined to ease ethnic tensions, that seems a curious oversight.