LUSAKA, ZAMBIA — For three days this week, a group of artists, researchers, journalists and others ready to make a difference sat around the Olive Grove room at the Intercontinental Hotel and talked about what they had in common.

Not much, one would think, on the face of it. Researchers talked about protocols and policies, journalists about tight deadlines and bad headlines, and the artists -- singers, dramatists, visual artists -- they talked about the myriad ways to create messages concerning matters of life and death.

Fuel shortages, power failures and Internet outages hinder, but don't halt health reporting here.Last night the lights went out, the sudden total onset of darkness followed by a resounding crash of thunder that went on, rumbling and clattering, shaking other bits of infrastructure for some minutes after.

Interpreting sounds in the darkness can lead to dire conclusions, and it seemed likely then that the power would stay out for some time, as it has in the past after routinely predictable events.

Maputo was getting on my nerves big time. I was running out of cash. My credit card was not working. Opening a bank account was taking longer than expected. I had a bad cold. Every morning at 5:00, the peacocks of the presidential palace, 30 metres from my window, woke me up with their screeching.

When I packed for Maputo, it was 32 degrees in Pretoria, 500 kms away. Friends in Maputo said it was equally hot there, so I packed dresses. But the weather in Maputo is treacherous. Two days later a nippy wind blew from the Indian Ocean.

I didn't think anyone would be watching when I agreed to talk about health reporting early on a Saturday morning talk show. But they were. Good Morning Zambia

MACHA, ZAMBIA — Chief Macha, of the Tonga people, has enough concerns of his own. The road that runs through his chiefdom and connects it to the nearest small town is rutted, rock-strewn, and when travelled by more than one vehicle at a time, enveloped in blinding clouds of dust. In this remote rural stretch malaria has been endemic, until recently killing about 50 children a year in a population of about 180,000 people.

The Highway Africa conference smorgasbord makes me salivate but then I fall prey to indulging in the hors d'oeuvres only to flag halfway through the main course. The HA event at Rhodes University is the largest annual gathering of the African media. Seasoned professionals and young students — some still in school uniforms – consume the fare side by side in buzzing lecture rooms.

Editors Note: Highway Africa hosts a DIGITAL STORYTELLING IN DEVELOPMENT JOURNALISM Workshop in Ghana.

Editors Note: Knight Fellow Sylvia Vollenhoven will co present a workshop on Development Journalism at Highway Africa conference. For 12 years, the Highway Africa conference has been at the center of Africa’s debates on journalism and new media. The conference has over the years become the largest annual gathering of African journalists in the world.

A trip to Ndola in Zambia's Copper Belt showed that journalists -- and their best opportunities -- share common ground on either side of the AtlanticNdola, Zambia — I have wanted to come to this Copper Belt city since I arrived in Zambia, as I have seen it as the place behind the events that move this nation. That is probably an overstatement, as in reality the far-flung villages, the border towns, the tourist attractions, and certainly Lusaka, the capital, all shape events here.

News of Michelle and Barack Obama's fist bump came to this village on the banks of the Lower Zambezi River, but the villagers stories of death and disaster for want of 20th century commodities are a harder sell.

Before the headmaster of the village school we came to started his story, he asked where we were from.

"America!" he repeated, a smile lighting his worried face, "Barack Obama!"

"Barack Obama!" he repeated later, walking across the village clearing, after he had told his story, and he turned to bump fists with another visitor.