BBC Tsunami Audio Interviews

The BBC has audio interviews related to the tsunami and relief efforts on December 27th. You can listen here (download now as it's online only through January 3rd).

I was half-asleep as might be evident ;-) as I believed I was to do another interview six hours prior (3 a.m. local).

I was caught off-guard. I do not think of my blog as a "personal diary". I think of what I do as raw unpolished literary journalism, or "journalism lived":

"For me, what I have to say is validated by the fact that I was there, that I witnessed the event. There is, I admit, a certain egoism in what I write, always complaining about the heat or the hunger or the pain I feel, but it is terribly important to have what I write authenticated by its being lived." - Deborah Campbell, "Can Journalism Be Art?" (via Canadian Journalist)

From the BBC blog:

Anyway on this week's pods and blogs segment we gave the show over to memories of the tsunami. We began by speaking to 3 bloggers who were eyewitnesses to the disaster. Evelyn Rodriguez who blogs at Crossroads Dispatches, Rick Von Feldt who runs the Tsunami Survivor blog, and Sanjay Senanayake who blogs from Sri Lanka as Morquendi.

There aren't many podcasts from the tsunami region, but the charity UNICEF produces a superb podcast with many shows dedicated to an examination of relief efforts. We talked to Blue Chevigny of UNICEF about why they podcast, interspersed with many great clips from their casts.

Kevin's contribution was an interview with blogger Dina Mehta who was one of the bloggers behind the Tsunami Help blog that was so useful in co-ordinating aid, and first place on the web, outside of the MSM for news on the disaster. Dina also has a great personal blog here: http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/.

Shaela Rahman is with the International Finance Corporation and has recently started work in Banda Aceh. She's new to the blogging business, but her diary is already a good read, an interesting on-the-ground account of the continuing relief efforts. She was joined by her colleague from the World Bank, John Clarke.

Lastly we looked at how smaller relief efforts had fared. Sam Schultz and Lee Downey of www.bonesandstones.com. proved that you don't have to be a big NGO to provide much needed aid, and quickly.

[BTW, I've been finding the grassroots efforts to be instrumental - in fact, didn't see much evidence of multinational NGOs at Phi Phi Island whatsoever where I was at for the last 8-9 days. When I asked a local why NGOs didn't show up, he shrugged and repeated a variation of the common refrain: "We were forgotten."  By the end of January it was clear to locals they'd have to help themselves. But that's another post.]

Comments

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There aren't many podcasts from the tsunami region, there is quite a few online

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Happy New Year Everyone!