JOURNALISM: THE (IN)SANITY OF BECOMING ONE WITH THE STORY

You are likely to start your journalism career with high energy, driven by mighty winds of ambition. Confidently balancing between serving public interest, and servicing self-interests of growth and success. Telling the story of other people grows on you. And you become a well-known story-teller. Then you and the story become one. The insanity around you, makes you question your own sanity.

How is it that a people can be so brutally uprooted, pain written all over their faces, and your work is just to report their plight?

Indeed, it becomes very difficult to tear away from the realities confronting you. The contradictions in life become more alive.

How other people's dreams can uplift you. And their nightmares won't leave you.

As our TV crew went about filming and filing stories about the desperation in northern Burkina Faso, I kept reflecting on the failures of humanity.

Seeing, especially children being exposed to so much suffering, makes you question the very meaning of life.

The shock...the horror...the trauma! If that's how I felt, what words would sufficiently describe the agony of those directly affected?

In a way, telling such stories could be the only way to mobilise assistance.

For me as a journalist, sanity prevails if there's a good ending.

But insanity is no longer far away, if all I do is help to tell a never-ending sad story.