prepare to report from South Africa

From the beginning of March I will be working and traveling in South Africa. My homebase will be Groblersdal, a town 2 hours north of Pretoria. It’s the town nearby Ndlovu carecentre, the place where my girlfriend is working.

Right now I am quite busy preparing myself for the trip to South Africa. While reading some books and doing online research I was thinking of some of my trips last year.

For my journalism program at the Arhus Journalism school I had to travel twice abroad. Once I made a trip to Romania and slowly traveled back home visiting friends in Serbia and Croatia. The other trip was a two weeks stay in the Republic of Moldova.

(Picture: Gheorghe and me and in Transnistria. See the result of my 2 weeks in Moldova)

But actually it wasn’t only the good times I had working abroad, but also the tips I got from my teachers back then. My professor Hans-Henrik Holm provided 7 points to understand a country. Another teacher came with the advice to contact local press institutions and commentators to get a feeling of the country. An advice I gave to my fellow students was to check out CouchSurfing to find a free place to stay and get in touch with (openminded) locals.

My question to you:  How are you preparing yourself for reporting abroad?