I have a special relationship to Rwanda for some time now. It is one of a few countries in the world that became a little home far from home, a place that is close to my heart, with all it’s struggles, beauty and extremes. So when the first grenade attacks happend earlier this year, newspapers got forbitten till after the elections and opposition leaders got killed, i was more then worried that a situation that in many ways seems to be fragile under the surface might get violent.

Rwanda is fascinating in many ways. Many of us have the horrific pictures of the genocide 15 years ago still in our minds when we think of this little country. A genocide that killed around 800.000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. But at the same time Rwanda made a extraordinary development in the years after, not least because of Paul Kagame and his government. Rwanda is a country that was celebrated internationally for this and when we think of a country that was in it’s ruins not only in it’s outer appearance but also in the minds of the people that lived there, it is extraordinary what happened there after. For instance health insurance. 90% of the Rwandas have a health insurance, made available for small money to make it affordable even for the poor. The agriculture is even exporting, something pretty amazing for a country that is small and very densely populated (with this as one of the biggest problems and also a reason behind the conflict). The school system is also developing well and Kigali, the capital is a capital on the move with construction sites all over the place. One of the policies of the government is that development and wealth is an important factor to fight hate, enviousness and conflicts. The logic is: ‘When everyone is doing good, there is no space for hate and violence.’ And for sure this logic is one that works is an impression you get when you first come into the country.

Under the surface and more out in the countryside things are different. First, the development is pretty much focused on the cities, the people living in the countryside are seldom direct benefit from that. And the structured preset agriculture is not in the interest of many that have side incomes that get destroyed through a governmental organized agriculture. And also in the smaller towns the modernization is not always seen with joy. One of the strongest stories of my students at the ‘With our own eyes’ project was the one that covered the building & modernization process of the houses happening in Butare that more or less will destroy every piece of flavor and history and replace it with a series of same looking buildings.

And even when a lot might be political decisions that have a clear purpose and are made with a hard hand, a even more important factor is under the surface, the old, officially not talked about conflict of Hutu and Tutsi. It is in the society wherever you look, even when it might not be obvious. It is under the surface, a dark monster that is working in many minds, forbitten to come close to heart for most of the year, but it’s having it’s place. As amazing as it is that it is possible today that Hutus and Tutsis can live together, work together, interact together again after such a short period of time, it still is a brutal part of the history of more or less everyone that is hard to really forgive and even forget. There are still murders every year that are related to it, around 200 or more related to the conflict are assumed. There are small things happening, hard to understand in first sight, like people that do not want to sleep in the same house with another person or other stories that show a mistrust, a hard hitting glimpse of the history still working. Just recently a man called in a live radio show, saying: “It’s sad, we did not get done with our business.”

Now, where the elections were no real elections as most real candidates that could fight Kagame were killed or their parties were not allowed to run at the elections, where media is forbitten or suppressed, one face of the rapid development of Rwanda is becoming obvious: First development and wealth, second comes the democracy and freedom of press. Rwanda is ruled with a strong hand and the western world now might react surprised, it is not new, it is only becoming more visible.

Interesting enough something many of my friends down there told me was that they believe that Rwanda needs a strong leader, someone with a clear vision, willing to fight for it. It is hard for our understanding of the ‘right’ political system, but it is not only propaganda that there is a deep believe in what Kagame is doing. He is popular and the result of this is are votes that show that, no matter if because of a lack of alternatives or of a true believe in what he is doing.

Many things that happened before the election are not right in any way and I truely believe in the freedom of speech and press, but I also believe that if we want to get an understanding of the situation we have in some cases first to forget of our understanding of things and learn to understand the situation and believes of the Rwandans.

The interesting question was never if Kagame would be elected again this August. The interesting question is what happens in five years. Then the constitution is not allowing Kagame to be re-elected again. If he is not changing this, in five years will be the moment where things could become more obvious than many think of right now. Where old and new conflicts could erupt, when there is no clear vision or guideline. Right now the clear vision of the Kagame administration (not the administration itself) is also something what unites the people. Even when just yesterday another grenade attack happened in the center of Kigali, leaving at least one dead…

Here is a short video from Time magazine about the elections and the history affects the elections.

One of the main goals of my work is to bring also the normal parts of life into my stories. And my experience was that every situation has this normal parts, no matter if you are in Europe or in the DR Congo (where i got one of the best cakes of my life for instance). There is more than the news hitting sad & horrific stories.  My impression is that the human being is like that, highly adaptable and finding the ‘normal’ in everything. There might be differences in the situation, in the culture and there is nothing what makes war and poverty less horrific, but this is one side of it. It might be the part that influences life to a big extend and many other things are like that because of this, but it seems like that everyone is searching for the normality in the state of emergency, if you could call it like that. And the refugee in Congo without a home and the fear to get raped or killed by rebels or die because of some disease might be more in this state as the poor mother of three living somewhere in the Kibera slum in Nairobi.

Why i’m writing all this? Because i think it is important to think about that from time to time. That it is important to also get the other sides. From journalists you often hear that they are searching for the truth. And they might find this, but in many news stories it is about the state of emergency and not about what is existing beside or in that. One part of the truth is that we follow each other, that we are influenced by eachother. I was writing recently about redundancy in the coverage from Haiti. This is part of the story. Maybe it is important to step beside the obvious path from time to time. To get off the beaten track and search for something different than what you are used to. Find the stories beside the stereotypes we are seeing and reactivating on and on again. Why that is important, beside treating the people you photograph with the sensibility and respect they deserve? It is also important for all the people in Europe or the US that might be interested in that and see it. Just because it is important for the understanding of situations. In my mind, part of the job is also to educate people in the way, that you deliver knowledge and impressions. And when we want to step out of the stereotype way, tell stories differently, we have to find the other stories, to bring a deeper and brighter understanding of situations. That there is life, normal life, that a slum for instance is not a unorganized space of lawlessness, but that the people there are organized as well, that they organize their lifes, that there are structures and daily routines, that the informal sector is making it possible, that they sell drinks or fruits in a slum as well, that there are shops. That it is not a lost space, but actually a place where a lot of energy of many big cities in Africa is coming from. They might not have running water or electricity, what makes the situation hard and also brings many problems and dangers for their lifes, criminality might be a problem, but it is only one part of it. The biggest part is still the normal life, the daily routines and all that. And it is important to bring the other sides to attention, because we can’t understand to a situation as long as we can’t relate to it. The horror is the thing what brings up our attention for a short period of time, but in the moment something becomes more diverse, it also has the chance to get more interesting. And i really think that this should be the starting point for most coverage, no matter if it’s in Europe, Afganisthan, Thailand or the DRC, to make people interested beyond the point of sensationalism. Only then we bring something the attention it needs to make a long-term difference. Not in the way to help people, but first to understand them a little bit better and bring them closer.

Sometimes this stories do not have to be far away from the classic story. Sometimes it is enough to change the perspective a little bit. For instance many people have to live in IDP camps in DR Congo. We know that because we see all the pictures of people fleeing or standing in long rows waiting for food. But is that daily life in a refugee camp? Maybe not. Who knows how a refugee camp is organized or what the daily habits in of the people living there are? To be honest, many of this situations are quite different to what we have experienced ourselves and hopefully will never experience. But it is about perspective. And about respect. At least to try to understand it.

]]> http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/03/11/eating-cakes-in-congo/feed/ 0 http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/01/25/haiti-a-learningful-experience/ http://www.simonsticker.com/2010/01/25/haiti-a-learningful-experience/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:22:14 +0000 Simon Sticker http://www.simonsticker.com/?p=1696

Two weeks ago the earthquake hit Haiti and destroyed more or less a whole country in seconds. What we saw in the direct aftermath was a media coverage close to painful in many ways. Now, not even two weeks after the earthquake, the topic does not even make the headlines of most newspapers anymore, the twitter feeds are getting more and more silent. Some might say, not surprising and yes, they are right. That is how it is in our world. Still i believe it could be different and still i think there are many things that could have been done differently (aka better?). This is a selection of my thougts to it. I’ve not been to Haiti in that time neither have i ever covered such a high media event like this. So this are my perceptions and thoughts of the coverage and i’m happy, when i’m proofed wrong or this leads to some discussion about the topic. Here are some of my points.

REDUNDANCY

This point is something what was discussed a couple of times in the last weeks. Foto8 pointed out that the huge amount of redundancy of pictures leads on the one hand to a point that many pictures are looking quite similar, but also that it takes away a huge amount of potential for stories to be told. Maybe it is normal, that in the first days in the whole chaos, where no one really has a clue where to go, how to get to places and what acually happened where, that the different media outlets are hitting the same spots. But does that mean that they should cover the same stories? In the first days we saw mainly one thing: A wild coverage of the devastation in many ways plus when ever someone was pulled out of a building. Like an overview of what happended. Quite understandable in this chaos, i guess, and maybe also the right thing to do. But isn’t a disaster like that, what is so wide spread, so total, the perfect situation to step away from the other, to find unique places, stories and pictures. It should have not been difficult to find horrific spectacular stories without the need of redundancy in that amount.

My concerns with that is not only that it leads to similar pictures. One of the problems i see is that a group of journalists covering the same events (more to that later.), also means that it will not help the relief teams in any way. There were many people who complained about the huge amount of journalists, being everywhere and not seldom just being in the way. So less redundancy means for some situations also more help for the actual relief crews on the ground.

STORIES

After the first days i expected to get bigger stories, like coverage of families for some days, their daily struggle in the situation. Less emergency snapshots, more deeper into the situation. I expected more single stories on certain situations, but at least my feeling was that the coverage never really stepped into that. My feeling was that most photographers were running around, still searching for the most dramatic picture they could find and at the point the bodies were mostly removed they went on to cover the ‘crimes’ that happen now. The ‘looting’ and so on (i mean, think about it for a second, what you would do, when you starve for days. Wouldn’t you try to get some food and water, even when it’s illegal?). The more dramatic the better. The other part of photographers embeded themselves in all the NGOs now taking slowly over after the first days and covering the relief they brought to the people. Also here many complained that the huge coverage of this was far away from reality and that the amount of coverage had nothing to do with the amount of relief that actually reached the people. That as many pointed out, the relief was reaching the people way slowlier than we might have thought, but at the same time the situation was beside exceptions most of the time calm and peaceful, was not what you got out of the media.

EVENTS

It was interesting to see how the coverage happend. For the first days after the earthquake i had no television, but could check the internet. So what i saw in this days was mainly pictures. Good pictures have in events like that a calm deep power to bring it close to you. With all the problems that the coverage itself might have, the pictures did the right job, also because they left out many things. Like a situation of a woman being pulled out from under a house and then seeing the picture of the same situation with six, seven photographers surrounding this two guys from the relief crew who just pulled out a woman from under a broken down house was more than bizzare and it was maybe the first time i really thought something is wrong here. Then, five days into the disaster, i watched CNN for the first time. I switched on the tele and the first thing i saw were two journalists, or better call it commentators, in nice studio light talking about the crazy stuff that happens all day in Haiti. They were obviously standing somewhere a bit higher, looking down in the back on a camp with displaced people. At that point i felt ashamed. It felt like it had become another event to report from. The commentators were looking on the situation without real contact to it, at least it felt like that. This might be wrong and maybe the nice light (wasn’t there a problem with power and stuff?) they were standing in, made it more bizarre. There is no doubt about it that a disaster like that needs te highest amount of coverage possible, but also or just because of that should the journalist not behave more from a listening point of view than shouting it out in the world how horrific and unbelievable the situation is without even trying to really understand it? Shouldn’t journalists not work together and spread out to cover as many different occasions as possible? And shouldn’t they talk with the Haitians to get an understanding what it really means for them, even better let them tell their stories?

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

I was looking for it all the time: That they start reporting not only on two things, the international help and the chaos, but start reporting what the people are going through. That they get deeper in the situations. Where are the stories following the people? Where are the stories about all the Haitians who pulled out way more people than any relief crew? Where are the stories of the Haitians who describe the situation and tell their perspective on it? Where are those stories that step out of the stereotype that a failed state like Haiti can do nothing right without the help of the western world? Isn’t it time that we learn that this is not reality, even when we would like to believe it? There is no doubt that every relief that comes these days to Haiti is good, that every help that really helps the people is good. But isn’t there another side of the story? We should stop to show them only as victims without a voice when we want to understand their situation. Without doing this we just swim in the same stereotype we are swimming in for way too long: The poor black people, not able to get anything running by themselves, but luckily the big western world comes and helps. We have to get into that when we really want to help on a long run and make Haiti something what could last longer than the glimpse of two weeks. When we not only want to bring the relief that billions of donations and the power of international help finally made it good, so we can forget about it again. When we want to keep the attention for the problems and potentials for a longer time and help, we have to understand it. And that is only done with the help of the Haitians. When we do not evolve a interest in their stories, Haiti will become just another goodwill story where no one feels bad about, because we stood together and donated some money, but also a story forgotten in some weeks.

WHAT COULD WE LEARN?

The problem of redundancy and with that the missing deeper stories and photoessays might not be solved in the first days of a disaster like that, but wouldn’t it be an idea as get cooperations running, like big media outlets working together, sending photographers to different places, with clear stories to cover, not this a little bit of everything? That would allow to dig deeper into stories, take more time for these. In times of the internet it could also be easily made accessable. Just think of twitter (a great resource of photography from Haiti these days…) What when photographers operating in a crisis area like that would upload their pictures and then tweet this with a certain hashtag (like Haitiphoto for instance). It would allow a good overview on what happens and the newspapers could pick out the stories they would like to take. This is just an idea and for sure there are some needs in the back to organize that, but it would also allow a bigger freedom to report and dig into stories.

Where are the Haitian photographers? Why were the first groups of journalists or NGOs not coming full with bags of cameras to equip the local photographers that might have lost their stuff, to get them back into the story? They know the place, they speak the language, they have passed through all this, so they have all the sensibility and understanding to cover it, a understanding of the situation that no one else will get close to in a short amount of time. Why not support them in any way possible? I’m not saying they should cover it alone, there is for sure a big need for the best photographers in the world to be there and cover it, but not only! And a big plus with local photographers is also that they could be the ones to cover the long-run stories when the crowd of war(event?)photographers had left for a long time. And it would be the right step to give the people more respect and act from a less voyeuristic point of view. What do you think, how a local photographer or journalist would have told the story of people looting? Without getting deeper into that discussion, would he have called it like that?

Maybe, that is my feeling, reporting from a crisis like that needs less shouting out, but more listening sometimes. And more power to the people, more trying to get their stories if we do not want to end it as a story of the western world intervening in a developing country to help, where we get out with the feeling of ‘just another crisis’ that could have taken place everywhere, more precise in every developing country.

At the end the media is also just a big business, so the amount of really caring for a situation like that might be low, especially when they go with the flow and report 24/7 on it till the point people get tired of it. For sure that is what brings for a short amount of time, when the story is hot, high TV ratings and good selling newspapers, but shouldn’t there be a little bit more sense of duty to do it right and with respect? And this way maybe create an interest for it that lasts longer than two weeks?

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