-Photo contributed by Deke Bowman
Deke Bowman
Reporter
November 4, 2005
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Senior Deke Bowman spent last summer working with
CMF International in Ivory Coast, Africa. -Photo contributed by Deke Bowman |
The morning call to prayer rings in my ears early around 5.30 am. “Allah Akbar” comes in loudly from the several mosques in the city and around our neighborhood.
As a communications major preparing to graduate, it was time to do my
internship. I figured I would just do whatever Dr. Carrie Swanay could find me.
It wasn’t my goal to try and find an internship in communications that really
fit me; instead, just something that would give me a few portfolio pieces. I
wasn’t really flippant about my degree, but I just didn’t know what I wanted to
do with it so that made it hard in seeking out an internship.
On a whim, I went to the National Missionary Convention last fall. It was there
where I was encouraged by my peers to check out the possibility of internships.
I laughed and reminded them that communications had to be low on the totem pole
for internship opportunities in the missions world. Little did I know that they
would be very right and I so wrong. My friends led me to the CMF International
booth. With my skepticism running at an all-time high I talked and inquired. The
goal at that point was to travel someplace else in the world and work for a
Christian based organization while getting the communications credit and
experience I needed.
They handed me an application, and I spent the semester trying to set it up while assuming I would be stuck in the home office making promotional materials. I was excited but never thought I would spend my summer that far south and so out of my world.
In March, I received unofficial confirmation that I was accepted into the
program. What a relief. All I had to do was convince Dr. Swanay that it was a
good internship and hammer out the details. For me, though, it wasn’t the
accepting or the convincing that caught me off guard but the location they
wanted to send me.
I had prepared myself for a trip to Thailand. But that phone call in early March
caused me to sit down when CMF International’s Associate Recruiter Kim Beigh
said, “Deke we would like to send you to Ivory Coast.” I told her I would let
her know. So I talked to my professors. I called some friends and I sought out
my roommate’s advice and I talked to my mentor Rob Rigsbee. They all asked me
what my big struggle was, why I was thinking about it so hard.
So I responded with a yes. I raised my $3,990 budget inside of a few weeks. I did research on the country. I was ready. Or so I thought.
It came to the end of May, which made it time for our week-long orientation. I spent the week working the office with all the different areas of media services, being briefed and helping where I could.
It was during that week that I was trained on the equipment and handed all of CMF’s equipment to take to Ivory Coast West Africa. It was then that the start of a two monthlong communications internship really started - except my studio was a country that was in political strife in sub-Saharan West Africa.
Once in Ivory Coast, I had to learn French as well as do all the video work for the project. And sometimes I had to pretend that culture shock wasn’t bothering me. As the team leader and camera guy, I still maintained the vague notion that I had to be superman and stay above the shock. It often didn’t work but I tried just the same.
Rules for media aren’t the same around the world. The rules for the actual media are generally the same, but the cultural rules for taping and taking pictures changes a lot. And that was hard to deal with and learn because I didn’t want to offend anyone, but I still wanted to get the good shots. I still wanted to be able to capture the internship on tape.
So throughout the summer I learned about the cultural customs when dealing with chiefs and civil authorities and when to overcome my own personal discomfort and get in the way to get my shot. It takes a while.