What Myles' is up to...

[mylesgm]

So after the big sell off and the various conversations I've had with people I thought I'd update you all as to what I'm getting myself in for.

On september the 8th I'll be heading off to Swaziland with my wife for a 12 month volunteer placement with Australian Volunteers International. My placement will be heading up a small local team to build, setup, run and then teach how to run the first community radio station in Swaziland. We'll be creating and broadcasting content specifically focused on lifestyle choices in the face of the world highest infection rate of AIDS/HIV (nearly 40% of the population have the virus in various stages of development) and a life expectancy that has dropped more than 50% in the last 20 years from 70 to 30 and still falling. I hope to extend the program to music as well as lifestyle programs, informational broadcasts etc.

We will be the only radio alternative to the national/government owned broadcaster and radio covers 80% of the population versus TV which covers less than 20%. Hopefully it will become a significant part of the community especially as we develop programs that speak directly to the community made by members of the community.

Yep so I am up to something a bit unusual and I'm expecting to need a bunch of support (technical, creative and personal) I'm hoping that the members of Turtlerock might be interested in being a part of that. I'll probably set up a blog so that I can let everybody know what I'm up to and I'm sure I'll be popping in here regularly looking for advice...

[Hud]

Man that is awesome, good luck Myles!

Great that you can put your talents towards making a difference in people's lives

[Chris H]

Good on you Myles. My son spent a month filming in Uganda a few yrs ago for a local group supporting kids who had been in Coney's army and my daughters friend did a medical placement way out back somewhere in Africa.
It would be great to keep us in the loop and let us know how we can support. Might be able to hunt up an old PKE broadcast console or other stuff you need.

[tunetown]

Congrats Myles. I wish you and your wife well. Please keep us informed of your progress.

Take care.

[The Tasmanian]

Good on you Myles!!!!!!!!!

[Wiz]

wishing you the best.

have fun, stay safe and congrats on doing something for others.

[Lee]

Good luck on your new adventure and thanks for chiming in on my posts in the past.

[graemeh]

It all sounds great Myles - good on you for having the balls to do something so off-center!

Wishing you and your wife a safe and happy year away.

[Hud]

I could have sworn there was someone else on the forum who was heading off to do some volunteer work too..

Or am I crazy?
Would love to be reminded of who it was

[Chinagraf]

Go M!
Hud - Tweekeasy is going to volunteer in Laos...

[chribble]

Wow!!! I really need to get out of Sydney after seeing this. Good luck Myles!

[mylesgm]

So a little update for you all.

I arrived in Swaziland about a week and a half ago (after 2 weeks of training in South Africa). Unfortunately just before my arrival the NGO I'm working for lost the majority of their funding and the team was reduced from 13 to 3 plus me which puts us back to the drawing board. According to those in development work here this is not unusual but for a very well established NGO like Lusweti (who I'm working for) it was a bolt out of the blue and tied to the global financial downturn as the first thing that goes from Government budgets is Aid funding.

Its not all gloomy though. There is actually a half decent studio here based around a 003 console a pc and a couple of mics. Lusweti currently manage two radio talkshows that are broadcasted by the government broadcaster (the only licensed non-religious radio in Swaziland) though these are set to end in a few months at which time we'll take over the creation of these programs. Hopefully by the end of november we'll have research in our hands to start the development of two multi-episode radio dramas that are currently being commissioned by two other NGOs and from there we'll see how things develop. I'll also begin training a 2-3 university journalism students in protools skills and content creation so that we can expand the use of the studio.

On the home front, we moved into a beautiful two bedroom bungalow with a loft and a shared pool. Set in a small compound full of trees and 24 hour security our rent also includes our house being cleaned (incl. laundry and dishwashing) 5 days a week so we are feeling decidedly colonial even though most of the local counterparts have cleaners and/or maids.

[The Tasmanian]

All the best Myles!

[danander11]

Very cool... Be blessed over there and please keep us up on how things are progressing.

[mylesgm]

and if you want to keep up-to-date with my little adventures...

http://mylesinswaziland.tumblr.com/

[Chinagraf]

Pad looks cool Myles. Hot over there?

[mylesgm]

30º+ is the norm at the moment but it shouldn't top 40º or at least not till high summer.

The pad is really nice and the loft is going to be my working at home mixing suite and entertainment area. Going to find out how well a peaked, thatched roof is for absorption/diffusion. I'll tell you it's great and then they'll sprout up all over the place by the time I'm back, right?

[audioio]

I just got home from SA and read your blog entry. I'm glad the visit went well.

For those who might be interested, I can say a bit about electronic media in South Africa.

Cell phone and data charges seem cheap... or maybe that was just Cell C putting a bomb under the more established players. Anyway, I found it convenient and generally good.

There are a lot of web sites that just don't work at all (two car hire companies for which one cannot make bookings online because their systems are full of errors) and many others aren't friendly at all. Since I had my 7-y.o. son with me, I was looking for things to do. One place in Johannesburg was called Afrobranch which seems to consist of a series of obstacle courses and physical challenges. That sounded like fun, but all the home page talks about is how one has to deposit money into their bank account to make a booking. It certainly didn't give the impression that one could just rock up and have a go... so we didn't. School holidays started in Gauteng and the Eastern and Western Cape this week, so you'd think they'd make the most of it. But this is sadly typical.

Picture and sound quality on many television programs leaves a lot to be desired. Half the free-to-air channels can't even get their picture and sound in sync!

Radio does seem to work and maybe that's where a lot of resources go, which is certainly consistent with what Myles said in his first blog post about radio being the mass medium of Africa.

It sure was nice to talk with you Myles and I expect Southern Africa's sound quality will improve markedly just from your being there.

[mylesgm]

it was good to hear from you David, nice to hear a familiar voice!

Yes the main tv stations and especially the free to air are pretty poor here in swaziland and I imagine it is similar but a little better in SA. In fact there is only 1 tv station here in swaziland and they present only one channel of very poor signal. I'm not even certain many people watch it. The level of technology integration is very unusual to our western ideas. Nearly everyone has mobile phones and lots stream tv on to their phones and access the 'net from there too, yet the idea of building,maintaining and exploiting internet resources through webpages seems very poorly understood or appreciated. A number of the popular youth icons (DJs etc) use twitter and facebook but not much else. Even the advertisements on radio are often someone reading straight off a script with little to no additional production.

I doubt I'll be doing any major alterations to southern africa's signal quality though. There are many excellent people who work in South Africa and across the region but there are many and diverse issues facing them. The issues are mostly ones of ongoing maintenance and different definitions of quality. Whilst watching my first broadcast at SBIS, a random technician or presenter would walk into the studio whilst on-air and have a brief off mic chat to one of the programs presenters, loudly move chairs around or simply bump the door shut as he walked out! No regards for noise pollution or for the fact that the presenters were clearly live to air!

[mylesgm]

new updates on the blog...

[mylesgm]

Blog has been updated. We've just returned to work and as yet we have no new premises so no studio building has begun...
www.mylesinswaziland.tumblr.com

[mylesgm]

new update on the blog.

[Manning]

For some reason your blog is blocked at work:

Content blocked by your organization
Reason: This Websense category is filtered: Blocked4LegalReasons.

What on earth are you up to over there Myles?

(Never mind, I'll check your blog when I get home).

[HA_DA_JA]

Wow what a different world, what a different headspace you would have to be apart of that.
Do you think you could bring any of that headspace back to Aussie and implement it here??

[mylesgm]

Content blocked by your organization
Reason: This Websense category is filtered: Blocked4LegalReasons.

What on earth are you up to over there Myles?

Nothing that dramatic I assure you though some of the governmental controls here are simply mental. Yesterday the government finally passed the electronic communications bill (it had been sitting before parliament for 13 years) which will begin the formal process of allowing non-government entities to hold radio and TV licenses. We'll see how that actually plays out in reality but it is a step forward.

Wow what a different world, what a different headspace you would have to be apart of that.
Do you think you could bring any of that headspace back to Aussie and implement it here??

There are many things about the headspace needed here that I would never ever want to implement in my life in Australia though I have to say that I thought I was a pretty patient person (professionally at least) before I came here but the pace at which things move in Swaziland makes that claim a bit false. Mind you the pace is one of the reasons there are so many problems.
Positives to bring home are mostly to do with feeling like I've contributed to people here, that I've done what I could in spite of the challenges and hopefully extended the capabilities and therefore the opportunities for my colleagues and the musicians I've been able to work with and, of course a greater understanding of the breadth of human experience. Before I left people often talked about learning from a slower life pace but I have to say that I disagree, when I am at work I want to work and I want to achieve and I don't want to sit around talking about how there are problems and challenges and not do anything about changing that.
I am also very keen to return to a society that for the most part is built upon the trust that when someone says that they will do something that not only are they capable of doing that thing but that they actually do it and do it when they say they will. I know that we can all point to australians who fail in this regard but here in Swaziland I can point to very few people who don't fail in this regard and I am constantly praised here for simply doing something that I said I would.

On the other hand, I'm only halfway through this experience and I still would heartily recommend it to all people for the lessons I am learning about the positives of our society, for the endemic challenges that developing countries face (and for appreciating that we in the developed world are partly responsible for some of those challenges) and for the beauty of humanity and the power of the human spirit in spite of those challenges and not least because we have a lot to offer those who are less fortunate than us and who also have a lot to teach us about ourselves.

[Manning]

Myles

: it’s not my music, I just found it here…

That is gold, gold, gold. Great update.

[mylesgm]

Myles

: it’s not my music, I just found it here…

That is gold, gold, gold. Great update.

Can't wait to drop that into one of my lectures or interviews, "As Hugh Masekela once said to me...."

[mylesgm]

Been awhile since an update and I'll be writing one soon but I couldn't resist telling you about my weekend.
I went down to a rural community call Siteki about an hour and a half from home to record 9 local bands to create some content for the first community radio station in Swaziland. When I say "station" I really mean initiative because in the thirteen years they've existed and campaigned for community radio they've been granted 3 one day licenses to broadcast the Kings Birthday celebrations. If that's not the definition of perserverance then I don't know what is.
Anyway the Kings Birthday celebrations are coming up again and we wanted to broadcast as much local content as possible including music so I carted a bunch of gear down there (more on that later) and prepared as well as I could for whatever might eventuate. What did eventuate was a thatched roof round hut (known as a rondavel here) which is usually the local Rastafarian "temple" complete with whole ganja bushes drying on the wall, about 30 people or so, a pile of the most beat up instruments I've seen in a long time and an enormous amount of passion and energy. As we are recording and people are hanging through the windows, eagerly sharing the headphones during playback and generally fascinated by the process I'm realising that just one of the microphones would be worth more than all the instruments and everything else in the room let alone my computer, UAD apollo, etc.

All in all in it was a fantastic two days of joyous music making and now I'm sitting mixing some of the jiviest, funkiest music I've heard in ages.

And on the subject of gear, a big thanks to Barney who sold me the JLM ba4 you can see in the pics at a bargain price, Lee Cardan who sent over a pair of headphone extensions and extra headphone sockets and jacks for free, and to Cris Stevens at Federal Audio who has sponsored Lusweti with three miktek microphones, the C7 that we are using for vocals and two PM9 dynamics one of which is on snare. I'll talk more about sponsorship at a another time but a big thankyou to these chaps with whose generosity things would be even more difficult than they already are!

[audioio]

Fantastic Myles! Wish I was still there.

[The Tasmanian]

I wanna hear them!
can you post something up? - a snippet?