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.

Francis Lungu, an editor for a Zambian current events show, and before that a reporter at a daily paper, knows the frustrations that come with deadline journalism. There was the time, recently, that a source tried to get him breaking news in time for the noon report of his show. But the Internet wasn't working. When that happens he runs out to the Internet cafe nearby.

When Martin is on safari the only news he gets is delivered in paw prints, dung droppings and from vultures buzzing overhead that tell him what animals passed through the night before, what animals may still be lurking, and which lost battles with their predators.

“That is my newspaper when I am in the bush,” he told us. He had been sharing that news with us for the last two days in South Luangwa Park where he was our guide. Over lunch he also gave us his take on politics, corruption and economy in Zambia , which newspaper is the most entertaining, which is the most credible.

In a recent workshop about journalism, organized by a consortium of universities in Santa Cruz, the brasilian Osman Patzzi, member of the ONADEM -the National Media Observatory-, concluded that local journalism that involves the community, and that talks about its problems, is the future solution for the current crisis that the sector is living due to the impact of digital tools and the world financial difficulties.

Although I had already visited some of them, this last weekend I held my first workshop after several weeks preparing suitable material to answer real journalistic problems, not

I would have looked up Ndubi Mvula, the Zambia Daily Mail's Livingstone bureau chief, in any case. His health reporting had been mentioned to me several times and Livingstone has the highest rate of HIV in the country. The stories there are important, and I looked forward to working with him to tell them in depth. And it's nice to know someone in a nice place. Adding to the fun, though, was that he had just come from my place -- all over the place, covering the most critical American presidential election in either of our memories.

Dr. Vongo clearly gets a kick out thinking people don't expect him to use a power point presentation to tell his story. He also enjoys pointing out that in a recent conference on leadership in the Zambia AIDS epidemic, he was one of the only -- if not the only -- speaker to stay within the 15-minute time limit.

"People think of us as the bad news," he says with a chuckle.

By "us" he means traditional healers -- the herbalists, diviners, spiritual counselors and birth attendants that 80 percent of people seeking health care turn to first in Zambia.

LUSAKA, ZAMBIA — "If you live on a small farm, as I do, your last prayer at night is that an elephant won't find your maize field," Dr. Mannasseh Phiri told an audience of African health journalists today. "It will wipe it out."

Phiri is a quietly compelling speaker and so he had the audience's attention as he went on to describe the feeding habits of elephants.

With small snouts and small mouths, they can only take in a little at a time, so they eat all day long. And as they search for food, they walk quietly; they don't run.

Greetings from Santa Cruz, Bolivia! The carnival is over and routine has come back to the capital of the eastern part of the country. Santa Cruz was paralised for one week, with thousands of people in the street drinking, throwing water and painting the walls, dancing with loud music... It was really crazy.Today starts a very interesting workshop organised by the ABOCCS, the association that integrates the main university graduates in communication, in Santa Cruz.

Since the beginning of the year, several communities in Accra have been experiencing major power outages as well as water shortages. What it means is that the power will go out for hours, crippling some businesses, like Public Agenda. When the power's out we sit around and talk politics and journalism; some people use it as a time to take a walk or go get the standard lunch -- rice and some sort of meat or fish in a sauce made with plenty of palm oil or, if it's Wednesday, fufu with meat or fish (it's heavier food and it keeps the reporters full on production nights).

Early into our partnership with Public Agenda, which bills itself as "Ghana's only advocacy and development newspaper," the publication received an award from the Ghana National Honorary Awards Hall of Fame for being "the best print media" in the promotion of peace during and after the 2008 presidential elections.  CACG said the newspaper won because of its "independent news presentation and analysis, effective monitoring and supervision of electoral activities before, during and after the 2008 elections towards ensuring free, fair, and transparent elections."