The Halfway Mark...And Pakistan Looming
Well, we’re almost three months in with about three more to go. As I write this I’m counting down the hours to our next train ride which will take us to our fourth country–Pakistan. It’s seems that the half-way mark is good place to stop, look around, and think about where we’ve been and where we’re going as a project, as journalists, and as individuals.
If three months ago someone had told me that we would find ourselves this deeply into The Common Language Project (CLP) by May, I don’t know if I would have believed them. While I know we all had faith in our project–to bring positive and under-reported stories from abroad to an independent media readership at home–it seemed so impossible.
It was hard to visualize how three people, with a smattering of media experience, and nothing but a desperate sense that they should be doing something other than bemoaning the state of the world every evening only to get up for mindless jobs they resented every morning, would actually be able to crack the international journalist code and find a way to report good informative and innovative stories from abroad, (let alone find a way to get people back home to read ‘em). Somewhere in me I was already preparing myself for the inevitable failure before we left, secretly comforting myself with platitudes about “growing experiences” and “travel opportunities.”
But sometimes you’re just wrong and fortunately this was one such case. I couldn’t have developed a more inappropriate collection of fears and anxieties surrounding the work I was setting out to do if I’d tried.
First, there was the concern that there wouldn’t actually be any stories of interest that mainstream media hadn’t already chewed up and spit out–well, I feel stupid even typing that now because the truth is that everywhere we go we are overwhelmed by exciting, hopeful, unpredictable, and complex stories.
Whether its tribal women giving corrupt local official hell over their plans to profit from callous forest destruction in the remote Indian state of Chhattisgarh or sex workers in the red light districts of Calcutta leading a powerful movement to legalize their profession and challenge Bush Administration funding policies, it seems that every corner of this world has a story dying to be told. And every town, city, and country we leave, we leave with the promise that we’ll come back to write the ones that got away echoing in our minds
Then there was my fears that we wouldn’t convince anyone to talk to us. I don’t think I can find a way to articulate how completely misguided I was on that front, if anything we’re drowning in people who are thrilled to have some one’s interested ear turned their way. In a few cases, like interviewing children victims of landmines in Cambodia, it took time to show that our intentions were honest. But inevitably, even in the most sensitive situations, a smile or a joke, an afternoon listening to music together, or a group photo is all it takes to get everyone to open up and start talking and then nobody can stop (CLP journalists included).
My biggest fear before leaving, and the one that still lingers beside me, is the fear that nobody back in the U.S. would be interested. I wish I could say that that fear has dissolved as readily as the others. In some ways it has, our readership grows steadily (if very slowly), and we’ve been lucky enough to have our article reprinting in a number of great places ($pread Magazine, The Indypendent, and World Peace Emerging to name a few).
But the fact remains that it’s hard to compete with the big media out there, and no matter how crucial and important the story seems to me, or how fervent my promises to people we meet that ‘America does care about what’s happening outside her borders, she just doesn’t know it yet,’ I can’t always fight the sinking feeling that we’re shouting into the wind. The more I love the work and the more I love the people I meet out here fighting and struggling for a better world against unimaginable odds, the more scared I become that my country has turned in on itself, concerned more with deflecting attacks than engaging with the rest of the world.
But the fact remains that the people I meet want their stories to be told to Americans and are excited to have the opportunity to talk to “the most powerful country in the world,” even if only through the goofy, sunburnt, journalist of a non-profit media collective (a term that never fails to inspire furrowed brows and raised eyebrows when I mention it). And in my opinion “the most powerful country in the world,” stands only to benefit by listening–on personal as well as a policy level. So I guess that last fear, that no one would listen, becomes obsolete as well. There are people listening and no matter how small in number they might be The Common Language Project’s going to keep throwing its lot in with them and good independent media, no matter how determined USA Today is to ignore us.
But on the eve of heading into Pakistan, a country typically on our radar only for its critical–though tremulous–position as “ally in the war on terror,” I am all the more aware of how crucial thoughtful and humanitarian international journalism is at this time. If and or when that much needed revolution in media does reach a significant audience, I hope that audience will be ready, and more than that I hope that The CLP, and like-minded projects will be up to the task.
© 2006 The Common Language Project