Thanks Deborah, Adam and Graham for your replies.

Graham - I've actually been thinking about this since you came to speak to my class about the kigaliwire. The more I read about people like you and Deborah doing this and producing great results, the more I want to go for it myself.

I might get directly in touch with more questions to you all at some point.

Thanks again.

Adam

@Adam Chidell I think the “Get out there and get on with it” advice is spot on. That's not to say you start heading to the airport right this minute, of course.

You may need to save a bit of money, figure out where you plan to go, contact folk there etc., but you can start building the web end of things from where you are now. The only real expenses you'll need to consider are domain name, hosting and perhaps a paid for wordpress template - that'll set you back around $100 (or less) all in.

In my experience that is a very good idea to set this stuff up before you go. I dread to think how long it would have taken me to build kigaliwire in Kigali itself given the attrocious net speeds and outages we get.

So, plan a bit, save a bit, network a bit, build a bit and then go.

One last point which I've yet to see proved wrong is;

The odder the place you go, the more work you'll find. It might not all be journalism for AP or the NYTimes, but there's always some newsletter that needs writing/editing, a report that needs researching/writing, a website that needs updating. And NGO's and foreign govt's and other orgs have cash - not always a lot, but enough to keep you in food and cover the rent.

If you have a blog like Deborah's or mine too, I pretty much guarantee the work will find you. That's assuming you're good at what you do :)

Bon chance.

Adam, you ask if it can ever be made to pay: as Deborah says it has paid for itself many times over. Not in direct ad revenue, or sponsorship, but in countless new opportunities, paid gigs and the like. Lots of people get hung up on seeing direct return and miss the bigger picture.

And actually the cost of starting a project like this is - while still not cheap - a lot more affordable than it used to be. The website: £60. The gear: could be yours for as little as £300 if you go down the second-hand/ebay route (as both Deborah & I did); the flights: the same as they've always cost. But the guts to go and actually do it? I don't need to quote the rest of the Mastercard advert.... :)

She's an inspiration, that girl Bonello! Talented and gutsy and a damned fine person.

Hey guys - thanks for the kind comments.

In answer to your question Adam, the point about the site is that it does eventually pay off. Turning it into a business model is a work in process, but considering that graduates from your course and other around the country often go on to spend months in unpaid internships that often lead nowhere, this is a much better place to dedicate your unpaid hours plus you teach yourself skills that will be indispensable in the future.

Email me with any more q's you have......

So very glad you're back. The strange dichotomy of Mexico falling into narco chaos and the DF rising out of the mire as one of the great cities of the world should prove to be rich fodder for an excellent journalist such as yourself. Best wishes.

It was partly thanks to a coffee in London with Deborah things worked out so well for me in Mexico and it's great to see her back there.

In answer to Adam, above, it can be made to pay. I went out with nowhere near as much money as Deborah suggested I have but things work out, slowly. There's horrible times when you've got nothing but eventually things will fall into place. About now I'm hitting the six-month mark which is when she suggested things would settle and they have.

This is the best route to foreign correspondence by far. It's hard but massively rewarding and it does pay eventually.

This is inspirational stuff! This website's fantastic. I've just spent half an hour browsing; the quality of reporting is top notch and the range of material impressively broad.

I'm studying the International Journalism MA at City and doing something like Deborah has done is constantly at the back of my mind as a possible option when I finish (although if I can do it half as well as she has, I'll be pretty pleased!)

There's one question I keep coming back to though: can this ever be made to pay? I'm not talking about getting rich (or I'd be looking for a job that wasn't journalism), but I'd love to know some of the figures behind a project like this are made to work (e.g. the overheads such as rent, the cost of equipment, cost of travel vs. income from freelancing / advertising, etc). I know that talking so bluntly about money is crass, etc - but it's a pretty important consideration when you're planning this type of venture. Or is it better just to jump in feet first and see what happens?

Anyway, my point is it strikes me that you would need a fairly serious amount of cash just to begin this sort of project - flights, rent, equipment, living allowance to tide you over until you made a name for yourself, etc.

If Deborah, or anyone else, has an insight about this, I'd love to hear it.

Also, the site reminded me of a similar one by Graham Holliday called the Kigali Wire: http://kigaliwire.com/