Ripples Long After the Rock Hits the Pond

Hla Hla with me at graduation.

Two events this week brought home to me that the rock you drop in the pond continues to make ripples long after it has disappeared.

My two rocks were dropped into the big pond at opposite ends of the world: Namibia and Burma. One was dropped in 2003, the other in 2006.

While Jo and I lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, back in 2003-4, I ran a training institute for working journalists from Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Cambodia.  Because I was not permitted to enter Burma by the generals who run that country, I had to rely on the U.S. embassy in Yangon (Rangoon) to vet the candidates for the courses. I was only able to telephone the embassy and discuss their choices. 

One young woman, named Hla Hla Htay, was chosen in 2003. She worked as a freelance reporter in the capital. She was very young, 23, but the embassy contact said she had something special in her spirit and in her willingness to sacrifice for her chosen profession. I chose her for the intensive four-month course in Cambodia and she made her way, surreptitiously across Burma’s borders to Thailand and then to Cambodia because the government of Burma was utterly opposed to sending citizens abroad for training.

Hla Hla distinguished herself every day. She was the quietest, most reserved and demure young woman. She loved Daw Aung Sang Sui Ki, Burma’s democracy leader who was being held under house arrest at that time. What I noticed about Hla Hla was she was tiny, perhaps weighing 85 pounds. But she had the strength and grip of a bulldog. When I assigned her a story, she would dig in and dig in, not letting up until she got to the bottom of the story. She’d work day and night, questioning in her polite, quiet way. But she never, ever, gave up. 

So it was with delight that I received a phone call from the head of Agence France Presse’s bureau in Bangkok, Thailand. She wanted to know if I could recommend any Burmese reporter who had come through our Southeast Asia Media Institute who might be a candidate to head their bureau in Yangon.

I had no hesitation in recommending Hla Hla but I also knew she would have a hard time selling herself because she was so shy.

The AFP bureau chief said she would meet Hla Hla at the Bangkok airport to interview her on her way home.

I told Hla Hla of this wonderful opportunity and she was excited but very nervous. I spent several mornings before or after her classes teaching her the art of the job interview. When she looked down while answering  questions I would stop her and require her to make eye contact. When she was self-effacing and down-played her abilities and qualifications, I helped her rework her responses so she did a better job of “selling” herself.

She graduated and headed homeward. I knew I would have a hard time keeping track of her fate because Burma does not permit most of its people to have access to the Internet. They cannot have an email address.

I did hear from her, though. She emailed me somehow, telling me the interview went well and AFP offered her a three-month trial. The news agency increased her pay from $50 a month as a freelancer to $1,000 a month during the trial period. She was “in”.

Then Hla Hla went off the radar. I kept trying to reach her but my emails bounced back from that closed country. I even tried to reach her via another Burmese who had managed to make it to our institute but who turned out to be a spy for the government. This woman had an email address. She also had a cellphone which, I was told, was a dead giveaway she worked for the government. Regular citizen of Burma cannot afford a cellphone which is sold for $5,000 U.S. in that country.

Nothing happened, however.

I Googled Hla Hla by name and found dozens of stories she had written for AFP. I also found dozens of picture she had shot and had transmitted out of the country. She’d made it through her trial and was entrenched as a correspondent. Now, it is with the greatest pleasure, I get to read her stories on the Internet. I still am unable to make contact with her. But it feels so good to watch her progress on a weekly basis via AFP.

Here are the latest headlines
* Myanmar's powerful Wa rebels seek a state of their own
* Suu Kyi's party sweeps landmark Myanmar polls
* Daily papers transform Myanmar news stands

Ripple No. 2 occurred yesterday when the ripples reached me from Namibia in Africa.

Christof, partying with Namibian editor Gwen
Lister.

The news editor of The Namibian, a young man named Christof Maletsky, wrote me to say he needed my help. I had worked with Christof on three occasions – in 2001, 2003 and 2006-7. He is a member of the Damara tribal people in Namibia and, as a result, has to work harder than those who are in the dominant tribe, Owambos, since the latter hold most of the political power in the country. 

Christof wrote me because he had lost a series of emails I had written each day to the journalists at The Namibian while I worked there. These emails discussed my beliefs about journalism. They analyzed that day’s newspaper, seeking to praise and criticize individual stories we had worked on. They talked about the fundamental need for curiosity in all journalists.

When I left Namibia in 2007, I presented a print-out of my emails to the newspaper as a memento. In addition, I had made the emails available as an electronic file. Christof wrote to say he had been using these emails for the past six years in my absence but the newspaper’s computers had crashed and the file had disappeared. Did I, by chance of a miracle, still have a copy of those files? He said he still uses these emails with the new reporters who start work at the paper.

Yes, I did. I found them on my laptop and sent the whole file to Christof in a couple of minutes.

Then I sat in my motor home and meditated about how we sometimes make an impact and never really know until later that we have changed someone’s life. Here were two instances where the evidence was pretty clear.