In these days of newsrooms "downsizing," I hear so many journalists searching for a higher purpose. They wonder if the work they have done to this point has been worth the strains it puts on families and even their own health.
I want to tell you the story of TV reporter
Barry Simmons, who gave up a solid steady job at a fine TV station,
WTVF in Nashville, Tenn., to chase a story that he felt the world needed to see and hear. Along the way, Simmons learned a lot about himself, about prioritizing and about the meaning of life.
This is how Simmons describes the story on
the project's Web site, which features a documentary trailer:
Milton and Fred Ochieng' are two brothers from Kenya whose village sent them to America to become doctors. But after losing both parents to AIDS they are left with a heartbreaking task: to return home and finish the health clinic their father started before getting sick. Unable to raise enough money on their own, the brothers are joined by students, politicians, and a rock band who launch a fund raising drive among young people across the United States. "Sons of Lwala" follows Milton and Fred on their incredible journey as they find a way, despite all odds, to open their village's first hospital.
I interviewed Simmons via e-mail to learn more about the project:
Tompkins: How did you meet Milton and Fred?
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www.sonsoflwala.com
Barry Simmons |
Simmons: I met Milton at a Nashville coffee shop while I was still a reporter for WTVF-TV. I thought at the time he'd make a great feature, but as I learned more about his story I realized I'd never be able to fit the scope of his journey into a minute-thirty package. It was during that initial meeting, actually, that I first considered leaving my job and seeing where the story might take the two of us.
What was it about them that you saw as more than a daily story by a local TV station?
Simmons: I saw a lot of different textures in their story that you just can't cover in a news piece. There was grief and pain, but yet there was also courage, nobility and even a little hilarity. The thing I love about this story is that it plays against the stereotype that all Africans are miserable back home and would jump at the chance to get out. Yet the Ochieng' brothers long for home, and even though they've been embraced by everyone from Sen. Bill Frist to Bruce Springsteen, at the end of the day they'd just as soon spend time with their family in Lwala. They understand community in a way that most Americans do not, and I think they offer us poignant models that we would do well to follow.
The other reason I chose the documentary format is that it would allow for a larger audience to see it and afterward, perhaps, join Milton and Fred on their journey to provide alternative health care in Kenya. The documentary is, in essence, a fund-raising platform for the brothers to keep the clinic open. This was my contribution: I'm not a doctor, so I can't heal their village directly; but I am a storyteller, and I can inspire people to donate enough money to hire doctors who can! We as journalists wield an extraordinary tool to motivate people -- through words and pictures. As I turned 30 I realized that, come what may, I wanted my legacy as a reporter to be one of finding redemption in the mess and heartbreak of everyday life.
How did you make the decision to quit your journalism job and follow this story? What did you envision it would all lead to?Simmons: I envisioned, quite rightly, that it would lead to poverty. Even with the partnership with my old station, I took a lot of expenses on the chin. What got me started, though, was a fellowship called the
International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., which allowed me to spend two months researching and then travel to Kenya for five weeks of filming. This fellowship made it a little easier to walk away from my job. But after the three-month fellowship was over, I was on my own. And once I returned to Nashville, I had to scramble to find money: applying for foundation grants, taking some freelance production work and dipping deeper into savings.
I'm still digging out of debt, but my primary concern is funding the clinic. Last week -- after a year of planning -- we hosted an extraordinary preview screening of the documentary attended by an audience of 1,800 that raised over $200,000 for the clinic. One day when my son asks me what I did with my early career, I'd much rather tell him that I served people in need than that I made a bunch of money and won awards. Of course, now that I think about it, I suppose it would be nice to be able to tell him both.
It seems to be next to impossible to capture American attention about issues involving Africa unless a celebrity is involved. How is this story different? How has the public responded to this story?Simmons: When you inject a celebrity into a story it tends to overshadow the real characters and shatter the intimacy of the true story. With Milton and Fred, I had all the material I needed to put the hook into audiences: these brothers are so funny, so endearing, so heart-breakingly earnest that you find yourself pulling for them throughout the film. People love stories about people, and I was careful to make this story about Milton and Fred --
not necessarily about Africa, poverty or global health. Those elements are certainly in the film, but only as they relate to the brothers and their journey. That's how you make people care about these important issues: you place them within the context of a good story and the lives of characters that you come to love.
Now that you have completed the documentary, what's next? How do you get this story in front of a national or world audience? Simmons: I'm looking for the next story. Until then, I'll be taking the documentary to film festivals, beginning with the
Nashville Film Festival later this month. I'd love to find a distributor to share the story with a television audience. There's also been considerable interest from about 20 colleges and universities to bring the film on campus to show students. I'll begin manufacturing DVDs soon to sell on our Web site so we can begin a sort of grassroots distribution.
What did you learn about yourself, about journalism and about humankind while working on this project? Simmons: So many lessons learned, but one thing that stands out is the realization that humility is a prerequisite for service. It is one thing to sweep into a village, dig a well in the spirit of pity, fly out before you've even met anyone and say you've saved Africa. This doesn't work: the continent is littered with the detritus of those efforts because no one bothered to actually ask these villagers what they wanted in the first place. What I observed -- and what I tried to capture in this documentary -- is the spirit of partnership between Lwala and those raising money in America. By allowing the villagers to build the clinic themselves and to decide how the money would be spent, the partners in the West empowered them to save themselves and retain the dignity they deserve as our brothers and sisters.
You can contact Barry Simmons at:
barry@sonsoflwala.com.
"It seems to be next to impossible to capture American...
