IT STARTED WITH A STOMPING
It is October 2013 and I am being mugged on the streets of Addis Ababa. I am carrying an iPhone 5 and the equivalent of $100. My assailants are more bone than brawn, but their strength comes in numbers: there are five of them. They are not particularly violent and after kicking me to the ground and emptying my pockets, they run down a dead-end street that is home to only a police station. They are opportunists.
Many things tend to moonwalk through your mind when you are being attacked in the Ethiopian darkness: self-preservation, frustration, anger, helplessness, resignation, self-loathing. As a journalist though, something else tends to creep in; that same quirky characteristic that in a time of crisis sees us running towards danger rather than away from it. The desire to tell the story.
As I lay in the gravel with a stranger's hand over my mouth it was this that crossed my mind. I had a story to tell and nowhere to publish it. In a country where crime is common it could hardly qualify as news, while my personal account of the attack had little relevance to sport other than the fact I was in Africa for a Fifa World Cup qualifier. The story was the football match; everything else was a footnote.
That made me think of many of the stories and the people and the places that I have come across in years gone by that remained unchronicled for one reason or another. That made me consider creating a blog. Essentially, it started with a stomping. ISWAS
Many things tend to moonwalk through your mind when you are being attacked in the Ethiopian darkness: self-preservation, frustration, anger, helplessness, resignation, self-loathing. As a journalist though, something else tends to creep in; that same quirky characteristic that in a time of crisis sees us running towards danger rather than away from it. The desire to tell the story.
As I lay in the gravel with a stranger's hand over my mouth it was this that crossed my mind. I had a story to tell and nowhere to publish it. In a country where crime is common it could hardly qualify as news, while my personal account of the attack had little relevance to sport other than the fact I was in Africa for a Fifa World Cup qualifier. The story was the football match; everything else was a footnote.
That made me think of many of the stories and the people and the places that I have come across in years gone by that remained unchronicled for one reason or another. That made me consider creating a blog. Essentially, it started with a stomping. ISWAS
ABOUT GARY MEENAGHAN
Gary Meenaghan is a Scottish-born freelance journalist. For six years he worked for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where he covered a wide variety of sports from Fifa world cups and Formula One to Emirati karate and Arabian camel polo. In 2013, he was shortlisted for the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) award for Beat Writing (30,000 to 75,000 circulation) in recognition of his coverage of the 2012 F1 season, which he followed around the globe.