home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Time - Man of the Year
/
Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
/
moy
/
090792
/
0907680.000
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1993-04-08
|
3KB
|
60 lines
FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
Of all the continents for a foreign correspondent to cover,
Africa, with its wars, hostile terrain and often impossible
communications, is the most difficult. TIME Nairobi bureau
chief Marguerite Michaels sums it up: "Getting the story in
Africa is only one-half of the job of a journalist. Getting to
the story, more often than not, is the real challenge."
Michaels, one of four Africa-based TIME correspondents to
contribute to this week's cover story, has met that challenge
in many ways. Perhaps the most dramatic was her visit last year
to Eritrea, which had just won a 30-year war of independence
from Ethiopia and had promptly shut down the airport and all
other means of communication with the outside world. Michaels
flew to neighboring Djibouti, chartered an Arab dhow to the Red
Sea port of Mesewa and hitched a ride for the final 71 miles to
the Eritrean capital, Asmara.
TIME Cairo correspondent Bill Dowell faced comparable
difficulties when he had to travel to Liberia to co-report our
cover story. With Monrovia's main airport still under rebel
control following the bloody civil war that ousted President
Samuel Doe, Dowell flew in on a tiny Cessna that landed on a
makeshift airstrip. Nearby lay the charred remains of a
Russian-built transport plane that had failed to make such a
landing a few days earlier. Dowell also visited Francophone
Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali. Michaels, meanwhile, fanned out
as far afield as Zambia, Zaire, Burkina Fasso, Nigeria, Benin
and Togo.
Further coverage was provided by Cape Town correspondent
Peter Hawthorne and Johannesburg bureau chief Scott MacLeod. In
the United States, meanwhile, former TIME senior editor Jack
White compiled a black American's view of Africa and the impact
of the evolving African-American lobby.
The main story was written by New York City-based senior
writer Lance Morrow, for whom Africa has been a longtime
passion. Morrow has made two trips there: in 1986, to write a
cover story on African animals, and in 1988, to explore on foot
the Mathews Range of northern Kenya. Despite Africa's immense
problems, Morrow and our correspondents hold deep, largely
positive feelings toward it -- not as a lost continent but as
one yet to be found. "If I could arrange it, I think I would
live there," says Morrow. He has even pinpointed the spot:
"Probably around the Great Rift Valley, northwest of Mount Kenya
on the Laikipia plateau." He could do worse.
Elizabeth P. Valk