Holiday In Harare
I visited Harare, Zimbabwe from September 16th - 19th, 2006, arriving three days after protests organized by the Zimbabwe Council of Trade Unions, which were violently surpressed by the Mugabe government. I took a set of photos and wrote five blog posts while I was in the country, on the flights back and since I’ve been back in the US. They’re collected here as “Holiday in Harare”:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: You Might Be Having a Currency Crisis If…
Part 3: Reading Between the Lines
Part 4: Zimbabwe’s Internet Under Threat
Part 5: Make a Plan
Sunday morning in Harare - Musicians moving their gear after a gig
I’m interested in reactions to the series in part because this is a form of “citizen journalism” I’d be very excited to try again. I get to travel around the world for my work, and it looks like even a short visit to a fascinating place can be profitable if you’ve got good contacts. Friends in Harare were good enough to fill my calendar with as many fascinating people as I could handle - I find myself wondering where I could go next and who I could lean on to meet activists and other sources.
Thanks for reading the series, and please share your thoughts either about the individual articles or about this idea of “holiday journalism”.
September 24th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
[...] This post is part of the Holiday in Harare series. [...]
January 15th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
[...] One of the brave activists I was privleged to meet when I visited Harare a few months ago was Frank Chikowore, an independent journalist who’d previously worked for the Weekly Times, before the paper was forced out of Zimbabwe by the Mugabe government. Frank was interested in the potential to speak and write freely on weblog, but was concerned about his ability to make a living as a journalist while giving his words away for free. [...]
August 31st, 2007 at 5:58 pm
[...] I was in Zimbabwe last September, debate over a proposed interception of communications bill was the major topic of conversation in [...]