A film by David Lale
Text and program from Al Jazeera | 30th April 2012
In Liberia, a country where radios and televisions are luxuries most people cannot afford, one enterprising journalist has found a way to get daily news and information to Liberians. Alfred Sirleaf founded an innovative newspaper, The Daily Talk.
The paper is Alfred’s answer to the misinformation he says caused Liberia’s brutal civil war. His innovation is to write it up each day on a blackboard in the centre of the capital, Monrovia, accessible to all.
Witness goes behind the scenes of The Daily Talk, following the tireless Alfred in his pursuit of news and getting to know some of the readers who make the newspaper a central part of their daily routine.
Filmmaker’s view: David Lale
I spent much of my time in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, loitering on a traffic island amid the dust and fumes of Tubman Boulevard. As it happens, this turns out to be a good vantage point to watch the world go by: presidential motorcades, boda-boda cycle taxis, Chinese construction machinery, liveried NGO vehicles and UN Land Cruisers trundle by, as well as the tide of pedestrians flowing into town in the morning and back to the shanties at sundown. All of Monrovia passes here. And on their way, many stop to read about what is going on in the world at The Daily Talk, a chalkboard ‘newspaper’ displayed on the side of a decrepit wooden shack.
I had recently produced a documentary project about Nairobi’s ‘jua kali’ culture, the ingenious solutions that the city’s slum dwellers find for the demands and difficulties of slum life, from inexpensive shoes fashioned out of old tyres and kerosene lamps from coffee cans, to bootlegged electricity and jerry-rigged water supplies.
So when I heard about a hand-written news service in Liberia’s capital it struck a chord as very much part of the same do-it-yourself spirit.
[…] Read the rest of the filmmaker’s view here.
Related links: