A veiled female journalist who also happens to be wearing a snug denim skirt sits in a soundproof studio with a fuzzy microphone in front of her face. In a booth next door, news producers prepare the daily diet of mayhem and more: three bodies found in Bakaro market; Somali President Sheik Sharif preaches reconciliation at a mosque; Islamic scholars speak out about the Shabab insurgent group cutting off hands; the livestock market is looking up and the price of goats, thank God, is steadily rising.
This is a typical day at Radio Mogadishu, the one and only relatively free radio station in south central Somalia where journalists can broadcast what they like β without worrying about being beheaded. Whoever controls Mogadishu controls Radio Mogadishu, and since the station opened in that has meant nattily dressed Italian administrators, a short-lived democratic government, a military dictator, various warlords and assorted thugs, Islamist sheiks and now a weak but internationally recognized transitional government that does not have a grip on the capital but is ensconced in the hilltop neighborhood where the station is.
The journalists eat and sleep here, rarely venturing out. Most get paid a few hundred dollars a month. Few people even live here anymore. Somalia has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism, with more than 20 journalists assassinated in the past four years. He drew his finger across his throat and laughed a sharp, bitter laugh when asked what would happen if he went home. The digs here are hardly plush.
Most of the journalists sleep on thin foam mattresses in bald concrete rooms. The station itself is a crumbling, bullet-scarred reflection of this entire nation, which has been essentially governmentless for nearly two decades.
One of the buildings on the compound is a heap of pulverized rubble with a blown-out ceiling. The building was apparently bombed in , when the station was run by General Mohammed Farah Aideed, a notorious Somali warlord whose militiamen fought against US troops in a vicious street battle later immortalized by the book and film Black Hawk Down. In a city where relentless small-caliber gunfire has reduced just about every monument, library and place of note to a pile of sun-bleached concrete block, Radio Mogadishu may be one of the last surviving repositories of Somali history.
