Hostile regions training can induce a useful paranoia

I’m in a paranoid frame of mind after spending a week in Wales. I had to fight the temptation to get the TV director who kindly gave me a lift back to London to check his glove compartment for hidden weapons and to produce his credentials and references, not to mention a valid driving license, before we got in the car.

That’s what I get for spending so much time around AKE’s instructors as part of their hostile regions training course, which is where myself and twelve other journalists, producers and directors were holed up last week on the English / Welsh border.

Having now done the training, I’m wondering how I managed to survive 33 years without it. Although the concept of the course sounds kind of cheesy, I recently got back – alive and relatively undamaged – from spending three years reporting from Mexico. That country – currently in the grip of an unprecedented level of drug-related violence – is now the kidnap capital of the world, yet during my time there I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to establish my whereabouts without Googlemaps, nor the faintest notion of how to handle heat exhaustion or know how effectively someone might be able to shoot their weapon – and how likely they might be to miss – by how they’re holding the gun.

I now know much more than I’ll hopefully ever need to about all of those things and a multitude of other possible hazards, such as spiders that put your face to sleep and then eat it, and strains of malaria that only exist in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But there were so many risks I simply didn’t know to deal with that could happen on my doorstep, such as traffic accidents, light or serious injuries, bumps to the head and allergic reactions.

What really struck home hardest, though, wasn’t how to get myself out of a field laden with landmines (really hope THAT knowledge never comes in handy) but the value of planning.

Planning everything.

Planning what you need before a trip, to what you need when you get there and what you’ll need when you get back home – be it parachuting into a country for a matter of days, or doing day or field trips from your base at home or abroad. The value of planning cannot be underestimated, ESPECIALLY when you’re traveling as a one-man-band video operator because you really can’t rely on anyone but yourself (‘Who can you rely on? Yourself!’ was the mantra of the course).

You don’t have a second pair of eyes to check noone’s following you during filming, nor do you have a second brain to remember that vaccination you need or the fact that traveler’s cheques are useless where you’re off to.

I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve been off filming alone and been oblivious to my surroundings, or had to use taxis off the street in Mexico because I didn’t plan ahead. I’ve covered uncounted street protests and civil unrest in Mexico without knowing how to counteract teargas or thinking about where to go if things get ugly, and gone to meet people I’d never met in places I didn’t know. I’ve been robbed at knifepoint (easily could have avoided that had I planned ahead), and sustained my most serious injury, one that I could have done more to treat on the scene if I’d known how.

We all get careless because stories unfold quickly and unpredictably and sometimes we feel we don’t have any choice, but it’s possible to really reduce the risk by thinking ahead and not shying away from taking control of situations when you feel out of depth.

For those freelancers out there, the AKE training might be a bit out of your budget – I couldn’t have considered it when I was freelance. But to those of you who do go to a lot of high-risk zones or cover high-risk communities or stories, or just work on your own a great deal, do give all this some thought. A lot of it is just common sense. I know it seems a bit over-the-top, but I wish I’d known before what I know now. This kind of thinking ahead makes you a much more confident reporter and storyteller when you’re working out of your comfort zone, which is often, because at least you know in theory how to react to certain situations and crisis.

And don’t skimp on the planning…no matter how experienced you are there’s always a worst-case scenario lurking behind the curtains that you need to have considered.

Related Posts: Mexican journalists put through their survival paces. “Journalism” category on MexicoReporter.com.

Category: Featured, hostile regions, journalism, media