Bus-Stops and Foundations

Posted by Daniel Hirschler on July 10, 2009 under Radio, View all | Be the First to Comment

We’re not starting from scratch in Savannakhet. Some of the people in the production group for the new daily program have received training before, some by us, DW-AKADEMIE, some by SR MDO, funded by SIDA, some by others.

Quite often, when we introduce new concepts to the group, it takes a while until find common ground to start from.

Today was a lucky day: we stood on the solid foundation of the training done by the Swedish colleagues and followed up by ourselves 2 years ago. I asked: “Do you still remember what a VoxPop is?” There was nodding and confirmation coming from some of the Laotian colleagues. Then: “What is the most important ingredient?” Some guessing, so fast forward: “An open question!”

We quickly had an open question, fitting the topic of tomorrows second pilot program. It was test-driven among the colleagues, worked fine. Two reporters went off and came back with a number of quite interesting answers from the people out on the streets and some pictures they had been taken with the “project camera”.

Tough question: the right equipment
Note that the equipment used is not the M-Audio recorders provided by the Swedish project. While these here do work comparably well in the environment, they are more often out-of-order, as they have to be recharged on time. Unfortunately this is a task beyond the organisational level of most of the people at the radio.

Shiny new bus-stops /w no bus in sight
It was about the bus-stops that had shown up recently with no busses in sight. A company had built them, but a bus network was abandoned due to taxi-drivers’ and peoples’ protest: It seems as if people did not like the idea of having to stop at the city limits, then changing into the inner-city busses and pay again for a new ride, when before their country-bus would take them to the downtown destinations right away.

“What do you think about the bus-stops?” One answer was: “Will you be setting up a bus company for us?”. No, but we can make it a topic on your radio and see what happens. It’s still a long way to go, but as (the chinese philosopher) Lao-Tse teaches us: Even those long journeys start with small steps…