Greetings pop pickers

OK, so I didn’t manage to say the words on the radio… but it was a show about young people and advocacy, so it’s not entirely surprising!

So, yesterday afternoon, about 2pm, my boss runs into my office and says “Jayne, you’re going on the radio tonight to talk about the state of the youth!” and so I did! We were invited to go on a show called ‘Insai Salone with Ismeal Koroma’ which is aired on CTN (www.cottontreenews.org) and is an English language show about life in Sierra Leone. I took part in a radio discussion with Femi and Desmond, two of my colleagues at YAPAD (Youth Alliance for Peace and Development) which is an organisation closely linked to CCYA and one that I work with frequently.

It was my first time on air in Sierra Leone and I really enjoyed it – I was on for an hour which is more air time than I’ve ever had in the UK! Because I was the only woman on the panel, I got asked a lot of questions about gender mainstreaming (which is not exactly the state of the youth). As my colleague Charles pointed out this morning “you are not too much a feminist” so I probably didn’t give answers that were as provocative as they’d hoped. I tried to talk about the idea that men and women experience things differently, and that this needs to be considered in all parts of life, education, health, employment – that men experience marginalisation too, but perhaps in a different way to women. I also managed to talk about CCYA and the bee keeping project, which is something that has taken up a fair bit of my time recently. Anyway, everyone seems happy with it and it looks like I’ll get the chance to go on air again sometime. So, I've been in Sierra Leone for 3 months, I'v helped to produce a radio show, I've had my photo on the front page of a newspaper and now I've been a radio panellist too. This really is the land of opportunity.

And the funniest thing? Apparently (though I didn't notice this myself) a few krio words slipped into my English! So I must be learning, small small.