Ethiopia Fulbright Summary

This post links to most of the work I did over the past year as a Ful­brighter in Ethiopia (Octo­ber 2009 — August 2010). While it will take some time to fully digest my expe­ri­ences there, sum­ma­riz­ing my work in one place serves to book­end that adven­ture.  The past month and a half back home in NYC has been an ener­getic leap toward new projects as I recon­nect with friends and look for paid work.  Before I jump head­long into inde­pen­dent games and dig­i­tal media strat­egy and art hap­pen­ings, let me take stock of what I worked on over the past year.

Sud­den Flow­ers Productions

My pri­mary project in Addis Ababa entailed work­ing with Sud­den Flow­ers Pro­duc­tions, a youth film col­lec­tive of AIDS orphans. I went to Ethiopia with the inten­tion of study­ing the col­lec­tive, focus­ing specif­i­cally on the impact that their cre­ative work had on their sense of self and role in their com­mu­nity.  Sud­den Flow­ers was much more inter­ested in hav­ing me teach though, so I taught twice weekly lessons in dig­i­tal design and inter­ac­tive media.  My favorite moment was when, upon explain­ing a game that ini­tially baf­fled the group, Adane chimed in with this real­iza­tion that “you make the story hap­pen by play­ing it.” It was so grat­i­fy­ing to help them wrap their heads around new cul­tural forms and cre­ate some them­selves.  Together we pro­duced a web­site about their con­tri­bu­tions to the 9th anniver­sary of the orphan­age many of them call home.  The project is call A Tal­ent No One Knew We Had.  After all the gam­ing and cod­ing, Sud­den Flow­ers wanted to get back to film­mak­ing for a lit­tle.  I helped them fundraise for their new film on Kick­starter.  Con­trib­u­tors were treated to weekly let­ter from the col­lec­tive on the progress of the film and a copy of the fin­ished work.

I did get to do some research in the end. I con­ducted in depth inter­views with the col­lec­tive mem­bers and gath­ered as much mate­r­ial as I could about the con­text they were work­ing in.  I’ve never amassed so much pri­mary mate­r­ial on a research project, and I’m not sure where to start with it…

Teach­ing

The Democ­racy Video Chal­lenge
My first oppor­tu­nity to teach beyond Sud­den Flow­ers came with the Democ­racy Video Chal­lenge.  The first day I set foot in the U.S. Embassy in Addis, some­one put me up to doing a work­shop on the com­pe­ti­tion to encour­age local film­mak­ers to sub­mit entries. The results were spec­tac­u­lar, which is a real tes­ta­ment to the enthu­si­asm and poten­tial burst­ing from Ethiopia’s grow­ing film scene.  On my last flight out of Addis, I ran into Ethiopian Yared Shumete, the competition’s final­ist for Africa, on his way to meet diplo­mats and film­mak­ers in the U.S. as part of his prize.

Addis Ababa Uni­ver­sity
The Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram at Addis Ababa Uni­ver­sity was eager to have me teach as well.  It was thorny nav­i­gat­ing the cli­mate of intense cen­sor­ship and repres­sion as national elec­tions approached.  While the Uni­ver­sity is tech­ni­cally autonomous, the entire first year class of grad­u­ate Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions stu­dents were hand picked by the gov­ern­ment with the inten­tion that they would go on to teach at regional uni­ver­si­ties cur­rently being opened across Ethiopia.  I taught pho­to­jour­nal­ism work­shops to sup­ple­ment their media pro­duc­tion classes.  It was clear that the stu­dents would ben­e­fit from any oppor­tu­nity to work on their visual lit­er­acy skills, so I gave a series of lec­tures on the topic at the University’s Eng­lish Lan­guage Improve­ment Center.

Internews
Internews gave me a chance to teach work­ing pho­to­jour­nal­ists.  The work­shop on pho­to­jour­nal­ism and AIDS went over issues of ethics and con­sent and included field trips to sev­eral orga­ni­za­tions work­ing on AIDS and related issues. The work­shop was so suc­cess­ful that the stu­dents work was gath­ered into an exhi­bi­tion and cat­a­log called A Light In A Shadow.

The Cli­mate Cen­ter of the Red Cross/Red Cres­cent
Shortly after I fin­ished the Ful­bright, the Cli­mate Cen­ter of the Inter­na­tional Fed­er­a­tion of Red Cross/Red Cres­cent Soci­eties sent me back to Ethiopia to teach Par­tic­i­pa­tory Video.  The Ethiopian Red Cross had been work­ing in Ebi­nat out­side of Bahir Dar for over a year help­ing the com­mu­nity con­front the impact of cli­mate change on their liveli­hoods and safety.  I taught a dozen com­mu­nity mem­bers to make short videos on the impact those projects were hav­ing.  The videos will be used to moti­vate other com­mu­ni­ties to adopt the pro­grams as well.  The farm­ers of Ebi­nat were eager to serve as role mod­els for oth­ers and thor­oughly enjoyed mak­ing the videos about their community.

Photo Essays

And when things were slow, I worked on photo essays.  She­gar FM is Ethiopia’s first inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion.  T&H Designs is a jew­elry design and train­ing busi­ness by two young tal­ented design­ers who are iden­ti­cal twins.  One Lap­top Per Child is dis­trib­ut­ing lap­tops to a few grade schools in Ethiopia. I vented my frus­tra­tions with the sex­ism I encoun­tered in Addis by pho­tograph­ing dis­carded used con­doms.