Field Notes

Dispatches from Pulitzer Center journalists in the field Twitter Facebook Instagram Website Newsletter

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Finding Home

Aryn Baker

15 February 2017

“I need 100 Euros.” The request came out of the blue. Minhel, the husband of one of the central characters in our Finding Home documentary project, was lounging on the hotel bed as his wife, Illham, narrated her struggles as a Syrian refugee in Greece for the camera. Four of her sons, in identical bowl cuts, were bouncing on the beds while Illham held the fifth in her arms. To be honest, the family needed a lot more than 100 Euros. They needed a home, jobs, childcare, school, diapers, warm clothes, food — you name it. But we weren’t in a position to give them anything. From the very start of the project, when we approached a very pregnant Illham and proposed to follow her and her family’s story on camera and in print for the next year, we made it clear that we would not, could not, pay her. Many other women had declined, but Illham and her husband agreed. That didn’t mean Minhel wasn’t going to ask for help when he needed it. We diffused the situation with a joke, and continued on with the interview. But the episode sent a chill down my spine.

 As a journalist who has reported from the frontlines of dire need and extreme poverty for most of my career, I am well accustomed to requests for help and money. Sometimes the need is genuine; sometimes the ask comes from pure and understandable opportunism — after all, the combined cost of my computer, phones and camera equipment probably amounts to more money than most of my subjects will see in a year, or even a lifetime. I usually deflect such requests with heartfelt apologies and an explanation that journalists are not allowed to pay for interviews.

 That said, there have been times when I have been so moved by a subject’s suffering, or the fact that she slaughtered her only chicken in order to cook me dinner, that it would be unconscionable to walk away without doing anything at all. In those cases, once my reporting is done, I make sure to send over a bag of rice, a jug of cooking oil or a bundle of fruit. Usually I send it through a local NGO, or have my fixer or driver deliver it in a way that it won’t be directly associated with me as a journalist. Does that break one of the core tenets of Journalism 101? Probably. But every instance comes with a personal gut check: Am I doing this in order to get something journalistically, or am I doing it to help someone in a way my journalism likely won’t? When I do it after my notebooks are closed and the story written, the answer is clear.

 But working on a long form documentary project that will be reported over the course of a year is a whole different category. The desire to help women in desperate circumstances competes with the demand for absolute journalistic integrity, which in many cases is in conflict with the ongoing need for continuous access. Just because the women in our project agreed to participate on day one doesn’t mean that they still want to several months in. After all, we are asking them for an extraordinary time commitment and access to the most intimate moments of their lives (literally – videographer Francesca Trianni was in the delivery room for the birth of all but one of the babies we are following).

 And unlike most documentary productions, which come out several months after filming has wrapped up, we are reporting in real time. Even as Francesca collects video for a feature-length documentary to come out at the end of the year, I am regularly publishing stories about the families in TIME magazine and on the website. Francesca and photographer Lynsey Addario are posting images and short videos to Instagram on a daily basis. We all create Instagram Stories, and do Instagram Lives. At the beginning it felt exciting to be on the cutting edge of multi-media journalistic storytelling. These days I’m starting to understand why it’s rarely done.

 Real-time reporting is the journalistic equivalent of quantum physics. The act of telling a story as it happens impacts the narrative in unpredictable ways. Even in regular documentaries the subjects are aware they are being filmed, and often perform accordingly. When they see the narrative of their lives unfold, in video, in the magazine or through Instagram, it affects how they conduct those lives and how they perceive our project going forward. One of our characters complained that she looked haggard and poor in some of the photographs, and asked to vet any new pictures going forward. (We reminded her that we were trying to report the real life of a refugee, and that no one would judge her for bad fashion considering her circumstances).

 Another character’s husband complained vociferously about his circumstances in multiple on-the-record interviews, but once he saw how friends and family back home reacted to those interviews, he decided to pull out of the project. “How does this story help me?” he demanded, when he saw the magazine article. As we have repeatedly done with everyone else in the project, we tried to explain that it wouldn’t help his family directly, but that it would help all refugees if we could show the reality of what it’s like to be a Syrian looking for safety in Europe. He wasn’t convinced. He accused us of making a profit from his suffering.

 Fortunately, our other characters understand. Despite the challenges of being constantly documented, they continue to open their lives, their dreams, their fears and their homes — no matter how impoverished — to our team. Their willingness to share is what makes the work so powerful.

 It also opens up another conundrum. Scores of readers and viewers and Instagram followers have reached out asking how they can help the families. They want to donate clothes, or baby strollers or money. They want to volunteer, and provide much needed medical assistance. This is the kind of impact every journalist hopes to have when a story is published. Many journalists end up directing the queries straight to the subject, or set up a fund, or create a foundation. I have done similar in the past. But we can’t do that with this story because are still reporting it. So even though I would love to see Minhel get the 100 Euros he needs, or more for that matter, directing money from our readers his way would be the same thing, in a sense, as buying access outright. It wouldn’t be me paying for the interview, but my gut check says it’s still wrong. Doing so would fundamentally alter the nature of the reporting.

 We as a team have struggled with this issue for weeks. We decided that the best approach would be to direct our readers and viewers to the humanitarian organizations that are directly helping our families. It’s an imperfect solution to be sure, but it lets readers act on their desire to help, and it helps our families indirectly through the aid organizations. Most importantly it keeps our readers engaged in what we believe is one of the most important issues of our time: refugees.

 We are working with a new company, Speakable, that has just developed something called an Action Button. It allows readers of an online news story to share their support, be it a donation, a tweet, an email campaign or a petition, directly with the organizations involved. It’s not something that could, or even should, be used with every story. But as more people dive into this new kind of journalism, it’s one more tool to help deal with the inevitable complexities of reporting and publishing a human story real time.

To read more of Aryn’s reporting, visit her project “Finding Home”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Cook smoke – a global killer

Nathalie Bertrams // Ingrid Gercama

“You put three stones and firewood”, explains Rose Chipembere from Pitala village in Northern Malawi, “then you cook your Nsima and relish on it”. In Malawi, girls and women still cook on open fire, and by doing so risk their lives on a daily basis.

Rose Chipembere explains what happens: “The smoke is giving me headaches and pain in my eyes – I get tears in my eyes when I am cooking. It makes me cough and I feel a burning sensation in my chest”.

Every year globally, 4.3 million people die because of exposure to household air pollution caused by household air pollution from cooking fires – that is one person every 8 seconds.

Judith Phiri, Senior Nursing Officer of Chintheche Rural Hospital in Nkatha Bay, says: “We have many, many women and children that have lung problems”. It is strange, she says: “they don’t smoke” but yet they have all of these issues.

Improved cook stoves are named by the Global Alliance for Clean Stoves as the solution in the fight against smoke exposure and deforestation and as an enabler for women empowerment. Cleaner cook stoves are more energy efficient through better fuel combustion and also produce less smoke.

To read more of Nathalie’s reporting, visit her project “Smoke and Mirrors”. 

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

The Forbidden Black Gold

Nathalie Bertrams // Ingrid Gercama

Carrying a load of 150 kilos of charcoal on his bicycle, Handle Marino has been pedalling all night to reach Malawi’s capital Lilongwe, where a wholesale buyer awaits the goods. He left his village at eleven o’clock at night only to arrive in Lilongwe twelve full hours later.

On the almost 100 kilometres from his village to the city, he runs the risk of getting caught by police, his bike and load confiscated. Marino’s actions are illegal under the 1997 Forestry Act prohibiting unsustainable charcoal trade. Stella Gama, Assistant Director at the Department of Forestry explains this is to protect future generations as “forest is endangered here in Malawi”.

It is not an easy situation since “over 80% of Malawians depend on trees for their energy needs”. The population of Lilongwe needs people like Handle to provide for their daily energy needs as more than 50% of the population in Lilongwe now use charcoal as fuel.

After selling his load to his buyer, Handle makes his way back to his village, empty racked and with a profit of 3000 Kwacha in pocket [the equivalent of a little over four USD]. Tomorrow he will risk his load again.

To read more of Ingrid and Nathalie’s reporting, visit their project “Smoke and Mirrors”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Where the City Meets the Forest

Ingrid Gercama // Nathalie Bertrams

Daily hundreds of whole sellers, resellers, packagers and transporters come together at Mgona market to sell charcoal. For an illegal market, it is very loud and boldly out in the open: vendors shout the prizes of their wares and even the police comes to buy charcoal.

Rose John, a wholesale lady, has been selling charcoal for almost five years now. It is particularly profitable, she says, when “there is no electricity, people buy a lot more”. On such a day Rose can sell up to five bags of 15 kg – for around 14 USD profit.

“People in Lilongwe prefer charcoal to firewood because firewood smokes” says Ronald Nijera, a charcoal stove producer selling his goods close to Mgona market. Especially in the rainy season “people like to burn the fuel in their bedrooms” as they don’t have a stand-alone kitchen. Wood is believed to be “for country people”.

Steven Kanhuni, chairman of the Mgona market shows that business is not without risk. Responsible for the daily faring of the market he has just come from the police station to deal with the arrest of his colleague: “Government forces us to abolish this business but poverty is forcing us to continue”.

To read more of Ingrid and Nathalie’s reporting, visit their project “Smoke and Mirrors”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Multi-Party Democracy and “Free” Trees

Ingrid Gercama // Nathalie Bertrams

“It costs us much money – around $10,000 per year per platoon – to protect Malawi’s forests”, says Stella Gama, Assistant Director at the Department of Forestry. Since one year the department and the army work together in a desperate attempt to save Malawi’s forests.

An army commander deployed in one of the biggest reserves shows the scale of illegal networks: “Are you telling me you are collecting fuel wood in a ten-ton truck? No, those are organised business men and they use the forest as their source of income”. Malawi’s charcoal trade is estimated at a total value of US$57 million.

The sheer scale of the plundering is a recent trend. “Before 1997, before introduction of the multi-party democracy in the country – we only used to have one guard”, says Plantation Manager Mr. Kabichi about the Dzalanyama forest reserve, an area of 984 km2. “The government was very strong. People were afraid to come in, even afraid to pass by”.

He continues: “Since multi-party democracy some things have become better. But most public assets are now seen as free”. He estimates the plundering at 5 ha of wood annually. He shakes his head: “We are losing here…”

To read more of Nathalie and Ingrid’s reporting, visit their project “Smoke and Mirrors”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

In Cook Stove Paradise…

Ingrid Gercama // Nathalie Bertrams

Florence Togama, a mother of two, from Mulema village in the South of Malawi, has a big collection of cook stoves: a modified Jiko charcoal stove, a Chitetezo clay model, two sets of built-in rocket stoves, one in the kitchen and one outside, and various models hidden under a pile of junk. Her kitchen is almost a museum of cook stoves showcasing the history of NGO work in the village.

But – even with so many different options available – Florence is still cooking on her “old” three-stone fire. She explains: “In the rainy season, with the wet wood, the other stoves don’t really work and smoke too much.”

Each model has its advantages and disadvantages, she believes. The Jiko model isn’t very energy efficient and the Chitetezo clay model, the most common improved cook stove in Malawi, is cheap but heavy and breaks easily. The in-built rocket stoves worked well for her, but now she wants to convert her kitchen in a bedroom – they are just not practical anymore.

Florence defies the myth that people will discard old cooking habits when a more advanced fuel and stove become available. Old habits stick and improved technologies might just don’t deliver the promised.

To read more of Nathalie and Ingrid’s reporting, visit their project “Smoke and Mirrors”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

The Stove Beaters

Ingrid Gercama // Nathalie Bertrams

In a suburb of Lilongwe under a few improvised roofs of plastic sheets and wooden beams, a group of men are forging charcoal stoves. Around fifteen bulky men hammer, weld and cut second hand metal sheets into charcoal cook stoves. They have successfully copied the Kenyan Jiko stove – a cheap and popular model without any energy efficient properties.

Owner Ronald Djierna started the business in 2013. “One person can sell over ten cook stoves (with prizes ranging $1,75 – 5) per day”. Djierna realised that his stove can be dangerous: ““This one – if you use it inside without ventilation, you can die”. Ronald would love to produce a cleaner charcoal stove but needs training and material: “Now we use the sheet from roofs to forge our stoves”.

In Malawi, most of the NGOs working on cookstoves are concentrating on rural areas, which constitute 85% of the country, and on firewood cookstoves.

Ramzy Kanaan from PERFORM, an initiative working on reducing forest degradation, says: “There are much more effective charcoal stove available in other countries.” He continues: “It is clear that charcoal in Malawi will continue growing. It is the fuel of preference across urban Malawi”.

To read more of Nathalie and Ingrid’s reporting, visit their project “Smoke and Mirrors”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Iraq September 2016

Jane Ferguson

Fallujah city is a silent monument to war. Abandoned since the guns fell silent in June and ISIS were driven out, it sits like a bullet-riddled Chernobyl. Not even the dogs trotting through the streets make a sound.

The Iraqi Army have set up checkpoints throughout the main thoroughfares, but with few civilians allowed in, these are mostly manned by bored soldiers, baking in the searing heat.  But a small number of lucky families have been allowed to return in the last few days.

They drove past us in a slow-moving convoy of small, white trucks loaded with their only remaining possessions – a satellite dish, foam sleeping mattresses, a child’s bicycle. Flanked by military gunmen, their drive back to their neighbourhoods feels staged, awkward, and even tense. These people have been through hell, and have had to persuade the government they had nothing to do with ISIS before being allowed back in.

A ten-minute drive down the road from Fallujah sits the sorting camp they came from. It’s difficult to decide what to call it – registration centre?  Internment camp? It’s not a refugee camp. The several thousand or so people there have come from refugee camps to this place in hope of qualifying for approval to return home. The tents protect people from the midday sun when the bureaucracy takes hours or even days. They are not allowed to leave until their name is placed on a list of the approved.

The men queue up at a building on the camp, waiting to be told through the windows if they have been deemed non-ISIS members. Inside the building, military and security officials from every apparatus in the government sit at desks and frantically type into laptops. Every few seconds a Military commander shouts out a name and everyone shouts back ‘white’. If you re on the white list then you are going home. If you are on the black list then you will be arrested.

Image and Text by Jane Ferguson. For more of Jane’s reporting visit her project, “Iraq: Battle for Mosul”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Jane Ferguson

[TOP] A signpost outside Qayarrah town - which was retaken from ISIS about a month ago. The Americans are helping get a nearby military airfield up and running again and this is largely expected to be where the main assault on the city is staged. In the picture, oil fields, lit by fleeing ISIS fighters are burning and creating large black clouds. The sign reads, “Here is Qayarrah, key to liberating Mosul”.

[MIDDLE] a Peshmerga fighter at a post to the East of Mosul city. It is the closest point on the front line to the city, some 11 kilometers away, and on clear days they can see the city itself.

[BOTTOM] The destruction in Fallujah city.

Image and Text by Jane Ferguson. For more of Jane’s reporting visit her project, “Iraq: Battle for Mosul”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Iraq September 2016

Jane Ferguson

A handful of shop-keepers in Qayarrah market have raised their shutters. Neatly placed vegetables and boxes of snack foods sit on wooden tables in front of pock-marked stores. This town south of Mosul city was occupied by ISIS until a month ago when Iraqi forces managed to drive them back northwards, and signs of normal life are starting, very slowly, to creep back onto it’s streets. “Thank God my shop was not damaged,” one owner said, standing next to a pile of green peppers. His eyes nervously examined the armed police who were escorting us.

Many of the buildings further down the road are now rubble, and few of the civilian homes look occupied.

 ‘Here is Qayarrah, key to the liberation of Mosul’ reads a hand-painted sign at the town’s entrance. Anyone discussing the upcoming offensive on Mosul city will usually mention this otherwise innocuous small town for that reason. It will be a main launchpad for Iraqi forces when they do eventually move on Mosul. It’s air base will likely host various forces involved in the fight, from Iraqi security forces to Americans. The town now has an atmosphere of a destined battle - a tense wait for the inevitable order to move forward.

 All the while thick black clouds created enormous, dark skies throughout the day time. Retreating ISIS fighters lit oil wells on the plains just north of the city – an act of sabotage and attempts to keep airstrikes at bay. It’s unlikely to work, and the distant rasp of fighter jets can be heard in the skies almost constantly now.

Image and Text by Jane Ferguson. For more of Jane’s reporting visit her project, “Iraq: Battle for Mosul”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Jane Ferguson

[TOP] Jon filming inside a former makeshift ISIS prison, in a village south of Mosul city.

[MIDDLE] Police at the frontline in Qayarrah town - manning a checkpoint, as oil burns in the background.

[BOTTOM] Children running to greet us on a hillside by a village near Qayarrah town.

Image and Text by Jane Ferguson. For more of Jane’s reporting visit her project, “Iraq: Battle for Mosul”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Rachel Nuwer

UDS, a South Africa-based company, has flown around 5,000 hours and currently undertakes nightly missions in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Province, with support from the non-profit groups Air Shepherd and Peace Parks Foundation. The company also recently expanded operations to Zimbabwe and Malawi, the latter in partnership with African Parks and the World Wildlife Fund.

To read more of Rachel’s reporting, visit her project “The World Without Wildlife”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Drones to Combat Poaching: Finally Ready for Liftoff?

Rachel Nuwer

"Drones to End Poaching" proclaimed headlines in 2014. Those jubilant declarations, however, failed to deliver. As one project after another fell by the wayside, unmanned aerial vehicles - once hailed as a blanket solution to the war on wildlife currently taking place in Africa - were largely written off by conservationists.

One group persevered. UDS, a South Africa-based company, has flown around 5,000 hours and currently undertakes nightly missions in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Province, with support from the non-profit groups Air Shepherd and Peace Parks Foundation. The company also recently expanded operations to Zimbabwe and Malawi, the latter in partnership with African Parks and the World Wildlife Fund.

I joined the team on the ground at Malawi's Liwonde National Park, where elephants are both pests and victims: they terrorize villagers in nocturnal crop raids, but they have also suffered from rampant poaching. UDS' pilots have only been flying for three weeks but they have already driven back illegal fishing boats in the park and deterred crop-raiding elephants. Once logistics are smoothed out, the team plans to undertake controlled studies to determine the most effective use of drones in the park. As co-founder Otto Werdmuller Von Elgg said, "We can't make any claims as to drones' effectiveness because we don't have the science to back it up yet. But we know from our records and where we fly that there is a reduction in poaching."

To read more of Rachel’s reporting, visit her project “The World Without Wildlife”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Jane Ferguson

[TOP] Children outside the frontline town of Qayarrah run towards our car. In the background is the smoke of the burning oil wells, lit by ISIS as they retreated.

[BOTTOM] The view from a tent in a sorting camp for displaced Fallujans. People here are waiting to be given permissions to return to their homes in the city and it's surrounding villages. 

Image and Text by Jane Ferguson. For more of Jane’s reporting visit her project, “Iraq: Battle for Mosul”.

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Mihret Ayele, 28, is part of the new generation of uncut women in southern Ethiopia. Image by Amy Yee. 2016.

For more of Amy’s reporting, visit her project at “Ending Female Genital Mutilation in Ethiopia”

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Konzo in the DRC

Amy Maxmen

Science writer, Amy Maxmen, and I have been reporting on a series of neglected diseases across Africa. We are currently traveling to the very rural town of Kahemba, which translates to “the town of suffering” to report on a little known incurable disease known as Konzo.

In the Congolese dialect Yaka, the word Konzo means "tied legs”— referring to the walk of people suffering from the paralytic disease. The ailment is caused by the consumption of insufficiently processed cassava, which naturally contains cyanide. More than 600 million people worldwide rely on cassava [yucca] as their main source of food. However, insufficiently processed cassava results in outbreaks of Konzo in thousands of children and women of childbearing age, whose diagnosis is often and dangerously mistaken for polio.

Amy and I are traveling with Congolese born, U.S. researcher Dr. Desire Tshala-Katumbay who has worked extensively in the region researching the disease.

Konzo, while incurable, is caused by eating improperly prepared cassava (yucca). The first questions I asked myself when we came across the disease were, why are people still eating cassava if its known to cause the disease - and why don't people move from the region if they can’t grown another crop.

 As we traveled to Kahemba the answers became more apparent. The town is extremely rural. After two full days driving primarily down dried up river beds and over small trails we finally came to remote village. The majority of the small houses dotting the roadside along the trek had piles of cassava drying on the rooftops. Due to the nature of the soil the people in this region depend almost solely on cassava for their diets. Given how remote the town is, and the lack of options or access to health care the people have little to no options.

Given the short amount of time we were given in the actual town of Kahemba we were initially concerned about finding sufficient cases of Konzo to report on - however we immediately started coming across people suffering from various degrees of severity of the disease. Walking through the streets of the town I encountered Again Kakene, 18, who had been suffering from Konzo since 2002. He relied on wooden blocks to drag himself to the market or to visit friends and relatives. His case was not unique, it seems that roughly 1 in 10 people in the town holds themselves up by makeshift crutches or sits on the ground with crooked legs.

For more of Amy’s reporting, visit her project page at “What’s Driving HIV in South Africa?”

For more of Neil’s reporting, visit his project page at “Konzo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo”

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Jane Ferguson

The idea of a nightlife in Baghdad seems like the nostalgic memory of an older Iraqi, reminiscing over the Saddam years. Speak to reporters who were last here during the constant, murderous violence of years gone by and they cannot believe you might walk down the street to a bar or restaurant for the evening.

Yet there are plenty of people out on the Iraqi capital’s streets after dark—grilling Masgouf river fish, and swinging red-hot shisha coals in the night as sparks fly off into the darkness.

A bridge over the Tigris regularly hosts dozens of parked cars at night, squeezing the already slow-moving traffic, as wedding parties get out and dance on the sidewalk.

The sound of a roaring, outdoor nightclub could be heard from my bedroom until late, as Baghdadis enjoyed the relief of cooler nights after a brutally hot summer.

When ISIS raced into Iraq in 2014 and swept down to Baghdad’s doorstep, people here were rightly panicked. The sectarian hatred of the radical Sunni group for the country’s Shiites—and their brutal treatment of the Sunni populations they ruled—was clear for everyone to see on nightly TV reports.

The momentum has now swung in the opposite direction, and with US airstrikes and offensives by the Iraqi military, the group is retreating. Horrific ISIS car bombs do still rock the capital, killing innocents, but there is also a feeling of increasing confidence here.

Yet even the most optimistic Iraqis have learned not to expect such periods to last. Fighting against ISIS alongside the regular Army are Shia militias. They are empowered, heavily armed and number tens of thousands. They are also not under the full control of the Iraqi government. People here really don’t know what those young fighters will do if ISIS is defeated. Having huge numbers of armed young men without jobs in any country is an alarming prospect. Many here fear that they may bring the next wave of violence.

Image and Text by Jane Ferguson. For more of Jane’s reporting visit her project, “Iraq: Battle for Mosul”.