JHR's website speaks eloquently about the power of the media to raise awareness about rights. JHR is a "social innovator." It works in countries with newfound media freedom, to hone that freedom into an active, activist media that promotes--even creates--social change. JHR "empowers journalists to better prevent conflicts, to encourage dialogue and to act as watchdogs on abuse of power. It saves lives."

I liked this rhetoric. When they offered me the gig, I quit my job, packed up my house, and prepared to move to Dares Salaam, Tanzania, for an eight-month posting as a journalism trainer with the Tanzania chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA).

In their third-floor office in downtown Dar, my new colleagues sized me up in an instant. I was driven to an evangelical hostel behind a gated compound and introduced to the nun who would look after me. I, on the other hand, took several weeks to realize what I was doing here: I was a tourist.

The office was the local branch of a southern African organization dedicated to media freedom. My kind hosts had evidently expected someone with schemes, lesson plans and schedules. Perhaps some financial resources to organize workshops on human rights reporting--possibly a grizzled beard. I had none of these.

In the flurry of vaccinations and goodbyes, I somehow neglected to form a very concrete image of just what I would be doing in Africa. I spent my first week reading the daily papers--the English ones--and trying to get my laptop online. By week two, my chief constructive activity was preventing things from blowing away--there was no power for air conditioning so we kept all windows wide open to catch the wicked Indian Ocean breeze.

Not only was I without a plan, I was also without the authority, resources, confidence or nerve to cast myself as a journalism trainer in a country where I had never set foot in an actual newsroom. MI SA welcomed me as a harmless intern, but in an office that did little apparent work, I grew impatient, restless and increasingly uneasy. I lasted barely two months.

Eight