U.S. journalists document Africa's struggles

Cheryl Hatch Young female soldiers listen to a lecture about safe sex at a military training base in Eritrea.

A woman finishes fighting for her country in a battle zone and can't return home to her husband because he's left her for a more subservient woman. A 42-year-old man on his way to fix the roof on his mud hut steps on a land mine and lies in a field for two hours before his screams are heard.

These are but two of the stories a pair of Ohio University graduates brought home from their experiences in late 1999 as Pew Fellows in Africa.

Cyril Ibe

Cheryl Anne Hatch, MA '00, and Cyril Ibe, MSJ '85, were two of seven journalists selected to participate in the Pew Fellowships in International Journalism program. The program's mission is to educate U.S. journalists in international issues and improve the media's coverage of worldwide topics. Recipients examine international issues, then spend five weeks in the country of their choice documenting the people behind their research.

Hatch was the first photojournalist ever awarded a fellowship. She traveled to Eritrea, a small country near Ethiopia, to chronicle the plight of women. Though a third of the country's army is made up of women, many still fight for individual freedom, rejecting such practices as arranged marriages and genital mutilation.

"I saw women fighting to liberate their country and struggling to liberate themselves in a patriarchal society," says Hatch, who lives in Oregon. The poignant series has appeared in The Washington Times and other publications.

Radio reporter Ibe focused on land mine victims in Angola. He was inspired to learn more about them when he heard a reporter's 1997 recording of joyful singing from a church in which 95 percent of the members were amputees.

Ibe learned that land mines from Angola's civil war kill or maim an estimated 70,000 people a year. His interviews left him physically and emotionally distraught, but he's been able to share his stories with fellow Chicagoans on various radio programs.