Jambo, Jambo

So I’m writing this from my beachside bar, in Diani, on the coast of Kenya where I’m supposedly on R&R, but mostly catching up on work reading and thinking through the project. Oh, and drinking wine and listening to the bar's limited play list of Carole King and Marlene Martisson (who I first heard at a jazz festival in Hua Hin), wandering along the white sand beach, stepping over the acres of washed up seaweed and avoiding the many beach boys and their “jambo jambo”,  the Kenyan equivalent of Asia’s “Hello Mister”.   

The two weeks before I came here were occupied by the recruitment workshops for selecting our 10 state producers. There were two candidates came from each of South Sudan’s 10 states: Western, Central and Eastern Equatoria; Northern and Western Bahr el Ghazal; Unity, Upper Nile, Lakes, Warrap and Jonglei. 

While we bought the plane tickets and reimbursed people for their transport, I am amazed at the distances people travelled just to get on those planes, often journeying for hours overland, staying overnight in a mid-way town and then travelling further to the state capital to pick up the flight. One woman came just hours after attending her father’s funeral. One person missed their flight because they forgot to take their ID with them; two missed their flights back as they forgot to print out their permission letters from us; one came down with Malaria and passed out during the workshop, and another decided he’d had enough and left half way through! 

But for the most part, it was success, I think. Mostly, my role involved observing: seeing how people interacted with each other and how they dealt with criticism. And also trouble shooting. For example, when the schools I had made arrangements with for reporters to work out of grew bored with the same questions: “what challenges are there for girls in education here?” I headed back to the schools to sit with headmasters and headmistresses to convince them of the value of their involvement. 

The candidates were a great combination. Some were journalists, some not. Some had never even used Adobe Audition - the editing software used by radio journalists. Some didn’t really know the challenges for girls in school. All progressed during the week.  

BBC Media Action programmes are not journalism per se, but what is called “communication for development”, which means using media/communication to help people attain their rights and live an equitable life. The areas we work in are: health, governance and rights and disaster risk reduction and resilience, and now, girls education. We tackle some of the entrenched attitudes and behaviours that are either unhealthy or exclusionary. 

To get people to change though, you can’t just tell them their attitudes and behaviours are wrong! Who wants to be told their entire belief system is wrong, and that they must change because some well-meaning western organisation thinks it's so?! So, you have to get people to talk about things. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the extent to which people discuss a behaviour is closely correlated to the adoption of that behaviour. People also learn by observing others, observing the consequence of certain behaviours and envisaging the consequences of adopting those actions on their own lives. 

So our programmes are (or will be) a mix of positive role models and voices: girls who stay in school and contribute to their families and communities; fathers who take an interest in ensuring their daughters are well protected at school and teachers who encourage girls to do well in school, rather than harass, ignore or impregnate them.  But it will also include other voices too. For example, what happens to the girl who drops out of school to get married, thinking she will suddenly be an independent woman? And discussion programmes, where people can phone or text in with questions about their own schools.

One of the exercises during the workshop was for each candidate to tell a story about how they changed a behaviour. The point was that a) it’s usually a long process from first recognising that you either want or have to change to actually making the change, and b) we often look to others to either guide us verbally, or by following their actions to help in the change. Few people change in isolation. Funnily enough, it was a class I took during my Masters that introduced me to these ideas of how people learn and change.  

The stories our candidates told were pretty incredible. We heard quite a few about overcoming alcoholism, one about the change from idol worship to Christianity (some might say that that really wasn’t much a behaviour change). Another guy spoke of how in his early 20s he used to “love other men’s ladies” (I am begrudgingly learning to accept the use of the word ‘lady’), and only stopped when he was caught and jailed for three months and his father had to pay 7 cows to the aggrieved husband. One of the women talked about how she had started socialising with men, going against the cultural norm and custom of her state. She explained how this grew out of a desire to advance in her career, and took us through the steps of first watching other women eat lunch with men, and then joining a safe group and now becoming a role model for other women who come from conservative society.

Several talked less about behaviour change than lifestyle change; working in cattle camps as young boys and envying those who went to school and finally, years later (in one case that included a stage in the army) getting to school. Another refused his father's demands to give up school and get married. One woman explained how her father had abandoned her family and that to earn enough money to send her and her brothers to school, her mother used to make alcohol. She learned to accept her father. 

From the 20 we brought down, we will employ 8, but from the emails and texts I have already received from those 20 candidates, I think everyone gained something from it, even if it was just a bit more understanding about the difficulties for girls in school or about their own country.