Stories from the edge of the sea

Centro de Estudios Marinos (CEM) is a Honduran NGO that works to protect coastal ecosystems and the livelihoods of the people who depend on them all along the Caribbean coast. Their many projects include:

• a yearly river race in traditional handmade canoes to raise awareness about mangrove reforestation;
• training unemployed single mothers to run a plastic recycling center that keeps garbage off the beaches;
• promoting artisanal fishing techniques;
• holding sustainable fishing competitions.

They even help run savings cooperatives for children who want to finance their own future. By bringing real, material change to people’s lives, and encouraging them to work for their own benefit, they have harnessed a well-spring of communal energy and fostered committed, articulate leaders, young and old. Almost 1000 people turned up for their recent anniversary beach party.

The staff of CEM knows that the work they do is unique. The problem is, not everyone else does! They’re so busy working in remote coastal communities they don’t have time to be continually posting on social media, producing elaborate Youtube videos or writing blog posts. So they turned to Studio Canek for help.

The solution we offered? A podcast series rich in ambient sound and voices from the field, that tells the story of some of their projects, and the people behind them.

Historias desde el borde del mar (or Stories from the Edge of the Sea) began with a training session in the fishing village of Cuyamel, near the Guatemalan border. Here trainer Conrad Fox introduced some 30 CEM staff and local community members to the art of sound recording. Participants practiced operating recorders, conducting interviews and writing podcast scripts before heading out into the streets to interview passersby. At the end of a long day, they returned to share their work in a surprisingly emotional session which featured some hard-hitting, revealing interviews and a newfound passion for audio storytelling on the part of all participants.

Participants then split into five groups and chose different themes to report on.

• A young girl who used her money from a savings cooperative to buy a bicycle (and then rent it to her sister!)
  
• Five tough-minded women who left jobs picking through garbage at the local dump to run a recycling center
  
• A personal exploration of the wildlife and nature behind one woman’s house
  
• The music and tales of the Afro-Caribbean Garifuna people
  
• Confessions of a fisher who used to use illegal nets and now evangelizes artisanal techniques
  

Conrad produced a sixth episode about the river race to serve as a demonstration for the others, complete with the sound of him falling in the water!

Over the course of a month, participants conducted interviews and recorded ambient sound, everything from parrots at the foot of a garden, drumming and singing by the beach and rain on jungle leaves. Once they had all their audio gathered Conrad returned to help them wrangle it into episodes. This time he worked with each group individually, wherever they were to be found, whether in the middle of the jungle or by the beach. Most of the participants were not used to writing hundreds of words at a time (who is these days!) and none had used digital audio workstations. But they all had a strong sense of storytelling and a clear idea of what they wanted their audiences to hear in their episodes. We found creative ways to discuss the structure of the script, and they discovered the audio software was not as mysterious as it looks. They worked tirelessly, deciding which clips go where, what information to show and what to tell, choosing main characters and scene order, and weaving ambient sound into the story.

At the end of each session, they recorded their narration, pausing only for the occasional interruption from the sound of waves, wildlife or weather. Nervous at first, they threw themselves into the role of narrator, a totally new experience for most of them and clearly a satisfying one!

It was a lot of work, but CEM now has a podcast series to share with the world. Here are the episodes (in Spanish):

El sonido de la Garifuna

La historia de un pescador

Al cuidado de la naturaleza

Ahorrando para un bici

Carrera de cayucos

Pisto es pisto