#pulitzerfieldnotes

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.

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”.

Unspoken Difficulties of Being a Refugee

Laura Kasinof

[Top] Germany has crammed refugee housing wherever authorities can find room. Sometimes that means in abandoned camps in the middle of the forest. For asylum seekers placed at these shelters, there are considerations like ticks that they may never have had to deal with in their home countries. 

[Bottom] A refugee shelter's not-so-subtle reminder of the cultural differences that asylum seekers may face.

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”.

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.

Off the grid

Daniel Moore

Over the course of a 15-hour tour of the most remote areas of northwestern India, we were shown various degrees of progress made to expand electricity to rural villages.

In Khedbrahma, villagers gathered in the one room schoolhouse, shown above, to meet with the Narottam Lalbhai Rural Development Fund, a nongovernmental organization working in the area to provide services to those living off the grid. Pockets of Khedbrahma have little or no access to electricity, and villagers live use kerosene or firewood for cooking, heating and light.

Elsewhere, in the rugged mountains of Ambaji, about 30 miles away from Khedbrahma, the government has provided for dwellings: one solar panel, five LED lights, an exhaust fan and a mobile phone charger. The government wants to bring electricity to every citizen by 2019, but many analysts believe that is an ambitious and expensive goal without the backing of private industry and a coordinated effort to streamline technology and attract financing.

Photos by Michael Henninger

The Birthplace of Indian Industry

Daniel Moore

Carved into the jungles of northeastern India, and through the oppressive humidity and daily downpours of monsoon season, Tata Steel's production facility in Jamshedpur churns out roughly 10 million tons of steel each year.

Thousands of workers oversee various stages of purifying, pouring, shaping the molten metal lava before it is cooled and shipped by rail or truck, destined to become auto parts, pipelines, construction materials and other urban infrastructure.

And Jamshedpur, a city of just more than 1 million people — mid-sized by Indian standards — remains a company-owned town. Tata Steel maintains the homes, manages the local hospital, and is widening streets and planting trees. It owns several parks, sporting arenas and a zoo with leopards, monkeys and lions.​

Photos by Michael Henninger

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…”