[Imc-africa] The Fate of Uploading

[Bwakali David John]

Dear Comrades,
Find below an article about the context within which we (and probably many of you in Africa) are working. There is a daily challenge of reflecting the offline activity online. But I think that we cannot run away from the fact that this is a digital age and so we must keep striving to be digitally capable. Yet this must not be at the expense of the offline activity that will continue to define our work. This article that I have written is not a fiction account but a true account.

THE FATE OF UPLOADING IN KENYA
    “Great!” she thumped her fist into the humid air of Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city. The previous day, she had managed to do a great interview with one of the local Sheikh’s who had some interesting theories on the unrest in Kenya. She had expected him to be militant but he had been 
 ‘pragmatically fatalistic!’ her slender fist thumped the air again as the guy who was selling roast maize nearby shook his head sadly. The unrest in Kenya must have taken its toll on the young lady, he concluded. 
    ‘Pragmatically fatalistic,’ she mumbled again. The Sheikh had said that what is written cannot be erased. If Kenya was meant to go through civil strife, then not even Kofi Annan or Nelson Mandela could change that. But if Kenya was not meant to go through civil strife, then everyone had a duty to ensure that peace prevailed. And once peace prevailed, justice had to be sought. 
    Those that killed had to be brought to justice. Those that funded those that killed had to be brought to justice. Those that killed because others had killed had to be brought to justice. Those whose actions or lack of action created a conducive environment for killing had to be brought to justice. Those that watched as others were killed had to be brought to justice. And those that merely shrugged their shoulders from the comfort of their living rooms as they changed to another channel had to find a way of redeeming themselves. The Sheikh had said all this with rhythmic eloquence and she had captured it all in her friend’s uncle’s ageing audio recorder. 
    Her colleagues in Nairobi were now expecting this audio so that they could upload it to the Kenya Indymedia website so that the Sheikh’s word of wisdom could be heard by the world. She had tried to upload this audio herself but the computers in the two internet cafes that she went to had problems with their sound cards. The third cyber was okay though internet was quite slow and they had to close after twenty minutes. Only ten percent of her audio had uploaded. Tomorrow is another day, the attendant told her and she had smiled in agreement.
    When tomorrow came, her parents in the nearby town of Kilifi called her and told her that she needed to go and take care of her grandmother for the weekend. They would be traveling to Lamu, another coastal town to visit their son, her immediate follower and ensure that he was safe and sound. So she decided to send the audio tape to Nairobi by bus. 
    The tape arrived in Nairobi two days later and was picked by an activist who was on his way to an interview in Kibera, the biggest slum in Kenya and one of the worst affected places by Kenya’s post election violence. In Kibera, more than 20 people had been killed by both police and militia gangs. 
    While in the matatu (public mini bus), he listened intently to the interview that had just come in from Mombasa. He sighed at the Sheikh’s eloquence and smiled at his wisdom. He was already looking forward to uploading this particular audio to the website. He was determined that after the Kibera interview, he would upload this audio together with eight other audios that had come in the previous day. There were also several audios from and stories from another coastal town known as Voi. They too needed to be uploaded. We need to find a better way of going about this uploading, he decided as he switched of his recorder and shouted to the driver to stop the matatu at the next stage. 
    The previous week, he had met with a few other activists and they had shared some duties amongst themselves. They even shared recorded audio tapes. ‘Once you are through with chopping the audio into smaller pieces, go ahead and upload it. Also find time and type the handwritten stories and proceed to upload them’ He had told them. As of that morning, nothing had been uploaded yet. 
    They had all run into several problems. Most internet café computers did not have audio editing software and did not allow installation of such software. They had said that this would encourage ‘everyone to install all manner of software.’ One of the activists had then tried to upload the entire 22 minutes of the audio interview but it took so long that he almost smashed the computer screen.
    After the interview in Kibera, he boarded another matatu and smiled broadly at two things – the enlightening interview that he had just had and the pilau (aromatic coastal rice) that they had offered him. Then right there in the midst of his smile, it dawned on him that had just made a grave error. He had forgotten to remove the tape from Mombasa from the recorder and had erased the entire interview of the Sheikh. 
    Damn! He clenched his right fist and wiped his brow with his left palm. Damn! But maybe it was written that the tape would be erased, he consoled himself. Besides, there were all those other tapes that had not been erased and all those other sheikhs and tomato vendors and shoe shiners and grandmothers and farmers and students that had not been interviewed. These people must be enabled to speak out and their voice must be captured for the world to hear. He was sure that this must have been written. Though technology was often against their work in grassroots media, at least fate was on their side. And nobody could erase that.  
   
    
  
       
---------------------------------
Never miss a thing.   Make Yahoo your homepage.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-africa/attachments/20080216/47dbff78/attachment.htm