Radio Okapi Kindu

When Jennifer Bakody steps off the plane in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2004, she walks right into the hardest and most inspiring job an idealistic young journalist from Nova Scotia could ever imagine. Six years of war involving eight countries and several million deaths have just ended in a ceasefire. Two weeks later, Bakody finds herself two thousand kilometres up the Congo River in the heart of the jungle, managing a small UN-backed radio station. Welcome to Radio Okapi Kindu. Welcome, too, to its team of hard-working local reporters determined to cover the country’s rapid march towards elections. One day rebel soldiers are walking out of jungle enclaves and handing in their weapons; the next, the station is airing messages asking after missing people and staging comedy sketches. When a public lynching is followed by an outbreak of violence, Bakody begins to realize how little she understands Congolese politics―and how little she has at stake compared to her colleagues. Maintaining the rigour of Radio Okapi’s editorial line suddenly seems like a matter of life and death. Can one small station known as the “frequency of peace” stand the strain? Radio Okapi Kindu is a touching memoir of a young journalist’s coming of age and a love song to a poor but astonishingly beautiful country.