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Subject: Serbian Mine, Albanian Cow. Sam’s moment of Zen on the radio.
Time: 6:44:00 AM PST
Author: majorsamuel
Still in Hohenfels, I got tapped to give a radio interview and take questions on the air with a local radio station. This makes sense because as the Engineer I’ll be doing a lot of things that directly affect the local population directly and in a tangible, concrete way. Other interviewees tend to talk in the abstract (“We are here to provide a safe and secure environment….”) which is all well and fine, but when an engineer speaks…this means a new road or a bridge. For a lot of the world, this means more than high-falutin’ promises of peace that can rarely be measured or even delivered.
Our method of preparing for an interview is not unlike that of just about anywhere else in the world. Our PAO (Public Affairs Office) puts together a list of likely questions and the “official” answers. However this is simply a guide. The doctrine is to be yourself and answer them in your natural voice. Here’s some examples:
Q: How Long Have You Been In Kosovo? What Do You Think Of Our Country So Far?
A: We arrived in the province just a few weeks ago. We did a period of orientation with the last unit and have just assumed the mission here in Kosovo. My impression of Kosovo so far are that it is a beautiful area. The people have been very supportive and patient with us as we’ve been learning our way around.
(Note: The question refers to Kosovo as a “Country” and the response carefully sidesteps that thorny issue by referring to it as a “province” and an “area”. Kosovo’s status still is indeterminate and US forces calling it a country is bad muju.)
Q: Is your family worried about you being in a war-torn country?
A: My family has been very supportive of me in my career. They are concerned, I’m sure, as the people of Kosovo are living here with their families. But, this is a great experience for me, for our soldiers and they are supportive of that.
(Note: sic.)
In addition to this guidance, the PAO sometimes puts out “scripted questions”. In this case the radio program I was on was “bought” air time. In other words, the Army bought the time on the radio station and made it kind of an infomercial. In these cases the disk jockey would ask pre-scripted questions and I’d answer with pre-scripted answers to get out specific messages or themes. We’re not reading verbatim, because that would sound stilted….but we are following guidelines.
My radio experience this time was a simulation of a combination of both of these. The first half was a scripted interview, and the second the jockey (or “talent” as he station manager referred to him) would take callers who would ask unscripted questions to test my ability to think on my feet. The whole time the disk jockey and the callers are speaking German, and I am working with a translator (a very nice lady from Finland in this case). This actually caused some confusion because there are enough cognates in German , and I have a passing familiarity with the language (read: I speak it like a 1-year old) that I kept on paying attention the disk jockey and translate what he was saying rather than using the “interpretation time” to gather my thoughts.
No matter. I passed the scripted part with flying colors. Norbert (the Jockey) was keeping things flowing very well and was a friendly sort. A local German hired by the Americans for this purpose, he looked rather like someone who had moved to San Francisco in the late sixties, made some money in some profession that allows you to grow a pony tail, and then moved to Marin and continued the quasi-hippie life style well into his late fifties. His ear ring was quite tasteful.
Then we had the callers. Again German speakers called up and I avoided most of the pitfalls. I never once, for instance, referred to Kosovo as a country. When one caller called up and asked if I could tell the difference between a Serbian and an Albanian I deftly avoided the trap by saying that as far as I could tell they were all just people. For the first half dozen callers it went like this…the questions came up, I answered them, life was good.
I was apparently doing so well the fiends in the booth decided to toss me a hard one…an angry caller. I was expecting the angry caller, and was prepared to deal with them….but they threw me something I wasn’t quite ready for.
The caller complained that his cow had stepped on a land mine and blown up. He wanted to know…who was going to pay for the cow????
My first response was pretty canned. One of the principles that we work under is that we are NOT the government. If we tried to help everyone our resources would snap like a dried twig…we can’t. So one of our central directives is to get the people to go to the legitimate (provisional) government and have them take control of the issue.
Cowman wasn’t satisfied.
“But the government can do nothing!” he insisted. “Who is going to pay! It was an Albanian cow! It was a Serbian Mine!”
You know….I usually think well on my feet, but I admit not always. I started to say something and I realized it was going to come out wrong. All wrong. I changed direction mid sentence, and what came out was rather…well…let’s just say it had a Zen-like quality to it. What I said was something like this:
“Look…it really doesn’t matter if the cow was Albanian….or that the mine was Serbian….at the end of the day….the cow is still dead.”
I tried to recover by making statements how we have to move beyond dead cows and into the future…but I admit I felt deflated. The radio interview wound up and we went off the air. My translator turned to me. She had kept a stony face through the entire thing. She now burst out laughing. “I couldn’t look at you,” she admitted through guffaws. “Or I would have laughed on the air. Ooooh, the cow is dead!”
I busted out laughing as well. And, as it turned out,so did the sound crew in the booth. The Public Affairs captain who oversaw it came up and said, nodding, “profound…very profound…” If it doesn’t seem funny, I guess you had to be there. The good news is…they videotaped the whole thing and I’ll be getting a digital copy which I’ll share on this Blog (if I can figure out how).
Written by majorsamuel Blog about this entry |
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Ok, I can't claim I would do any better, and certainly one could have done worse. All and all a mooving account. At least you weren't greeting callers with 'So, what's your beef' or somesuch. However, you could have observed that in India cows are held in extremely high regard, such that the death of one in this manner would be appalling, perhaps worhy of the expression "Holy cow". Then it might have become an udder disaster.
See? I would have done much worse and stuck my hoof in my mouth. Ack, I've milked this enough.
Or you could have segued into the merits of your mission involving demining and how this illustrates the perils worldwide with old minefields requiring considerable time and effort by trained individuals, dogs, and pouched rats to eliminate.
2/1/05 11:04 AM
That was painful.